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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



















THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 
OF THE 

CHRISTIAN LIFE 


BY 

EVAN HARTZELL MARTIN 

. .'I 

President Board of Examining Chaplains 
to the Bishop of Western New York 


) 

» ) 

» > 

5)0 


1923 

THE DUBOIS PRESS 
ROCHESTER, N. Y. 


BTrr 

Msi* 


Copyright, 1923 
Evan H. Martin 



OCT 26 23 

©C1A759836 


"W© I 


TO THE LOVING MEMORY 
OF MY SAINTED WIFE 


whose wide reading and retentive memory , 
whose unsparing , but kindly criticism , 
and whose sweet Christian spirit 
were my unfailing help and inspiration 
for nearly half a century , 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 


What are the Great Essentials of the Christian 
Religion—the doctrines and duties of the Chris¬ 
tian Life and Hope—is a question of profound and 
absorbing interest. To answer this question sat¬ 
isfactorily and within reasonable compass can but 
be looked at as an achievement well worth the un¬ 
dertaking. 

Hitherto no writer, to the author’s knowledge, 
has set himself to precisely this task, though many 
have covered the ground more or less fully over 
and over again; but not in a single treatise, or under 
a like head. If one should be asked, “Where may I 
find a book that will give me a clear and satisfac¬ 
tory outline or statement of the really essential 
doctrines of the religion of Jesus Christ, differen¬ 
tiating them from the near and non-essentials?” it 
is doubtful if one could give the desired informa¬ 
tion. It is to meet as well as he is able this desire 
and demand that the author ventures to offer this 
little treatise. 

It will be said, no doubt justly, that no two 
minds perfectly agree as to what these essentials are > 
that while they might agree substantially on some 
points, they would differ widely on others, one 



VI 


PREFACE 


making essential what the other would call non- 
essential, or even of doubtful truth or merit. 
Recognizing the weight of this objection, the 
author has undertaken not only to name what he 
considers the great essentials, but also to show by 
facts and arguments why he regards them as 
essential. 

The great desire of the author is to help honest 
inquirers after the truth to find a satisfactory an¬ 
swer to their yearnings without too long a period 
of searching, and at the same time make the excuse 
no longer tenable that they have not become Chris¬ 
tians because they do not know what Christianity 
is. It is needless to say that the author lays little 
claim to originality in the contents of this book. 
Most of what he has to say has been said in sub¬ 
stance many times by other writers and teachers. 
His chief claim to originality is indicated in the 
title of the book, that its claim is to treat of essen¬ 
tials only, not attempting to defend opinions or 
dogmas which may be good and true in themselves, 
but are not really necessary in order to be worthy 
of the Christian name. It is the belief and hope 
of the author that he has set forth the great 
essentials of Christianity in an order and with 
sufficient clearness and fulness to leave no reader 
of ordinary intelligence in ignorance of what a 


PREFACE 


Vll 


disciple of Jesus Christ is bound to believe and do 
to the best of his ability. There is no attempt to 
sound the depth, nor to elaborate, the whole content 
of Christian truth. The mystery of the Gospel must 
ever obtain, for it is profound beyond all finite 
thinking. If St. John could say that all the books 
in the world could hardly contain the things that 
should be written of the words and works of 
Jesus, how much more might it be said that the 
world is not big enough to contain all the books 
already written of Him, to say nothing of the books 
yet to be written, The purpose of this book is 
achieved if enough has been said to make plain to 
the ordinary reader and inquirer the great things 
necessary to be believed and done in the way of 
Christian endeavor. 

Making little claim to originality of thought or 
argument, still the author is not conscious of using 
directly the material or method of others without 
giving some sort of credit to them, though he has 
not in every instance been able to give his auth¬ 
ority for the fact recorded or the name of the 
author quoted. Footnotes have been avoided be¬ 
cause the book is intended for the popular, rather 
than for critical, reading. 


E. H. M. 


CONTENTS 


I. 

God The Great Reality. 

1 

II. 

The Character Of God— 

His Fatherhood. 

15 

III. 

The Glory Of The Father— 

The Incarnation. 

26 

IV. 

The love Of The Father— 

The Atonement. 

42 

V. 

The Great Power Of The Father— 
The Resurrection. 

57 

VI. 

Exalted To The Right Hand Of 
Father—The Ascension. 

The 

70 

VII. 

The Promise Of The Father— 
The Holy Spirit. 

79 

VIII. 

The Incarnation Extended— 

The Church. 

90 

IX. 

The Word Of The Father— 

The Holy Scriptures. 

105 

X. 

Communion With The Father— 
Prayer. 

118 

XI. 

The Sacraments Of The Gospel. 

132 

XII. 

Christian Missions. 

147 

XIII. 

Christian Social Service. 

162 

XIV. 

Christian Education. 

175 

XV. 

Important, if not Essential. 

190 




CHAPTER I 


God The Great Reality 

The Starting-Point of any essay or endeavor to 
set forth the Great Essentials of the Christian Life, 
or of Christian faith and duty, is the conception 
of the being of God. To the Christian God is the 
great Reality. If there is no God all is chaos and 
uncertainty. It goes without the saying that with¬ 
out the conception of God and belief in Him there 
can be no religion. The idea of God and religion 
are one and inseparable. The materialist, the 
agnostic and the positivist have no religion because 
they know no God or supernatural order of being 
in the universe. They know no world except the 
phenomenal, or that which appears to the natural 
organs of sense. The highest order of being or 
beings they know or care to know is man. Buddh¬ 
ism, it is true, is a religion, or is commonly reckoned 
so; for though it neither affirms or denies cate¬ 
gorically the existence of a Supreme Being, it dei¬ 
fies Buddha and worships him as God. So the fact 
remains that some notion of a divine or super¬ 
natural Being is essential to the fact of religion. 

But while belief in the existence of God is fun¬ 
damental to the Christian life and hope, it is not 


2 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


essential that one be able to prove beyond question 
that God actually exists. If that were requisite then 
no religion would be possible; for though there are 
many and strong arguments supporting the great 
doctrine, there is no proof which amounts to a dem¬ 
onstration, by removing all possible uncertainty. 
It is an old and true saying that God cannot be 
found at the end of a syllogism. Nor is it greatly 
to be desired that He should be found in such a 
formula or setting. For is not the mystery of God¬ 
liness an invaluable asset to true religion? His 
infinitude, His passing all understanding, is surely 
an attribute greatly to be desired in a Being worthy 
of all adoration and worship. “Canst thou by 
searching find out God? Canst thou find out the 
Almighty to perfection?” (Job 11,2). 

But though we cannot prove by any dialectic 
or demonstration the certainty of the existence of 
God there are a number of arguments which the- 
ists have from time to time advanced in one form 
or another well worthy of consideration. A very 
brief statement of these arguments only will be 
attempted in this article. 

The arguments which theists have dwelt upon 
at greatest length are commonly called the Cos¬ 
mological, the Teleological and the Ontological. 
Other terminology is sometimes employed to give 


GOD THE GREAT REALITY 


3 


these arguments expression and force, but the 
meaning is the same. Each one of them has 
no little merit and weight, and the three taken 
together leave little to be desired in the way 
of a dialectical or logical proof of the divine exis¬ 
tence. They have, in fact, never been success¬ 
fully answered by atheist or agnostic. Yet it can¬ 
not be claimed that they give absolute proof of 
the doctrine, though they certainly do leave the 
balance of probability decidedly in the affirmative. 

The Cosmological argument for the existence 
of God maintains that the outward visible world 
is contingent and dependent. Its existence can¬ 
not be accounted for, or explained by evidences 
of any cause or force within itself. To account 
for its existence the human mind is compelled to 
fall back on the hypothesis of some original im¬ 
petus or agency that does not appear, finding sat¬ 
isfaction and rest only in the idea or concept of 
some power above nature. How can we account for 
results so wonderful in the world of matter which 
to all appearance is inert and lifeless without some 
extrinsic power or force above or within it which 
is self-existent and infinite? On its face the ques¬ 
tion seems to admit of but one answer: there 
must be some energy in the universe worthy to be 
called Almighty God. 


4 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


Now while this argument has its merit and 
appeals strongly to many minds, it is not without 
certain elements of weakness. The fact that we 
cannot account for the material world without 
the conception of a Creator does not prove neces¬ 
sarily the actual existence of a Creator; for the 
question at once arises. How shall we account for 
the Creator Himself? Whence comes He? How 
could He exist without being caused any more 
than the material world? No logical answer is 
possible. An uncaused cause may be possible, but 
it is inexplicable. So it must be concluded that the 
cosmological argument, taken alone, cannot be 
counted as a conclusive proof of the existence of 
God. 

Yet as a step to other proofs and evidences the 
cosmological argument has its value. It cannot 
be characterized as a worthless or specious ar¬ 
gument, though negative in character. It helps 
to the conception of some being or power greater 
than ourselves. Our minds tell us that there must 
be a Mind back of all greater than our own, and 
we naturally draw the inference that that superior 
Mind is not only supernatural, but uncaused and 
infinite. Therefore the cosmological argument is at 
least entitled to respectful consideration. Though not 
conclusive it is not to be cast aside as worthless. 


GOD THE GREAT REALITY 


5 


The Teleological argument, or the argument 
from design, is another step toward scientific and 
logical proof of the existence of God. In studying 
the material and tangible world we do not find it 
a mere chance collection of parts or atoms—par¬ 
ticles of matter sustaining little or no relation to 
one another. On the contrary we find many evi¬ 
dences of thoughtfulness and purpose in its for¬ 
mation and movements. Matter does not appear 
to be a heterogeneous conglomeration of ele¬ 
ments, purposeless and meaningless. Earth and 
air and sky, light, heat and moisture, sunshine, rain 
and temperature, are so corelated and tempered 
that the ground is made to produce food and sup¬ 
port for man and beast; life is sustained and ample 
provision is made for them to attain the end of 
their being. The evidence of a Divine Providence 
is so manifest that it is not easy to account for 
doubt on the part of any one as to the existence 
of a great Originator and Designer. On its face 
the proof seems compelling. 

Yet it must be confessed that this argument 
has its vulnerable points. While there are many 
apparent evidences of supreme wisdom and pur¬ 
pose in the working out of human welfare and 
happiness, we see on the other hand a world of evil 
and contradiction,—perils on land and sea, de- 


6 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


structive elements in nature; as lightning, tem¬ 
pest, earthquake and volcanic eruption; cruelty, 
brutality and ruthless destruction of life and prop¬ 
erty; useful and happy homes broken up and 
ruined by devastations of war, pestilence, famine, 
disease and accident; while desperate characters 
and worthless lives are left to live long to pursue 
their own way to the injury of those who live for 
a worthy purpose. Would an all-wise and infinite 
Designer order the evil as well as the good we see 
in the world? Is it possible to reconcile such 
diversity of facts and conditions with the con¬ 
ception of an infinite and benevolent Designer? 

But the mistake of those who have proposed 
and urged this objection to the idea of design in 
the universe is that they have had a radically 
wrong and impossible conception of God. They 
have thought of Him as a supreme arbitrary and 
mechanical power, wholly transcendent; and stand¬ 
ing in an attitude toward his universe as an inven¬ 
tor or mechanic stands to his machine, having 
absolute control of each and every several part, and 
therefore able to make it function perfectly and 
without variation. 

Now if such a God could or ever did exist why 
did He not make a perfect world to begin with, 
a world incapable of physical or moral evil ? Why 


GOD THE GREAT REALITY 


7 


should He permit or suffer so much cruelty, in¬ 
humanity and destruction of life and property in 
the world? Could He not just as easily and readily 
have made a world free from every defect or 
possibility of error and every kind of evil? 

But are we not assuming too much when we 
assume the existence of such a Deity? Do the 
facts of life justify such a conception of the Divine 
Being? Is there sufficient evidence of the presence 
of such a Power or Arbitrator in the universe? In 
the light of reason and observation the true God 
cannot be thought of as wholly transcendent and 
without restriction in the exercise of his attributes 
of authority and power. Such a conception can¬ 
not stand the test of sound thinking. We must 
think of God as immanent as well as transcendent. 
He is in his world, ever making his presence man¬ 
ifest; contending with conditions and problems 
which must arise continually in the very nature of 
things. There is no reasonable ground for con¬ 
cluding that the universe is under the absolute 
control of an arbitrary power able to change the 
order of nature at his option, and when He chooses 
leave it to itself to work out its own destruction. 
There is no evidence of the existence of a God who 
could have made every creature perfectly good and 
perfectly happy. It is an unreasonable conception. 


8 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


We know that the most perfect organism in this 
world is not so perfect that it never fails and never 
can fail to overcome all opposition or interruption 
in working out its plans and purposes; that it 
sometimes fails to function to the best advantage. 
Take the organism of the highest known order 
of creation, that of man, for example. How per¬ 
fect the normal child or youth! Every organ of 
sense is healthy and free to perform its function. 
Yet with all its perfection and promise it rarely 
succeeds in developing the highest ideals of man¬ 
hood, physical, mental and morah Now is it not 
reasonable to conclude that what the soul of man 
is to his material frame and environment, the soul 
of the universe must be to the universe itself? 
That Soul or Mind we believe to be and call God. 
He is in his world to work out the great end of its 
existence in the best possible way. In the nature 
of things it is attended with difficulties and 
complications commensurate with its greatness 
and vastness. But that does not prove the absence 
of design in creation. It only shows that the great¬ 
est and best possible world, conceived by the 
greatest Mind in the universe, encounters difficul¬ 
ties which can be solved and overcome only by a 
long process of creative power and energy. 

The argument for the truth of religion from 


GOD THE GREAT REALITY 


9 


design is much strengthened if not fully confirmed 
by a still further argument called the Ontological, 
or the argument from thought to being. Its claim 
is that the very thought or idea of God in the mind 
of men, that the human mind is able to conceive 
or grasp the idea of an infinite Mind in the vast 
universe, is strong proof of the Divine existence. 
How could any man ever have thought of God if 
there be no such Being? Baldly stated, as it has 
been by no less a thinker than Anselm, who goes 
so far as to aver that if so perfect a Being did not 
exist we would have to posit one to account for the 
universe, this argument is open to criticism, and 
it is not surprising that it has been repudiated and 
even ridiculed by rationalists and agnostics. They 
speak of the absurdity on its face of concluding 
the actual existence of a person or thing because 
we are able to conceive of it in our minds. They 
argue that there is no limit to the power of the 
imagination to conceive of objects which have no 
reality in fact. They cite the well-known saying 
of Kant, that “the notion of three hundred 
dollars in my mind is no proof that I have them 
in my purse . 5 ’ The argument presented in that 
way is its own refutation. 

But the fairer and truer statement of this ar¬ 
gument of the transition from thought to being 


10 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


puts it in a very different and much stronger light. 
Though our minds are finite, the very fact of their 
finiteness implies their complement in an infinite 
Mind. What can our minds be but the reflection 
and expression in miniature of the infinite Mind, 
even as the tyght of the planets are the reflection 
of the light of the great central luminary of the 
solar system? As Principal Caird puts it in his 
Philosophy of Religion, (p. 159) “As spiritual 
beings our whole conscious life is based on a uni¬ 
versal self-consciousness, an absolute spiritual 
life, which is not a mere notion on our part, but 
which carries with it the proof of its existence and 
reality.” This way of stating the Ontological ar¬ 
gument in the endeavor to prove the existence 
of God must appeal forcibly to every reasonable 
mind, and is quite satisfactory to many, though 
it can scarcely be said to amount to absolute proof. 
This much it certainly does; it puts the burden 
of proof to the contrary on those who deny or 
contest the truth of religion. How is one to ac¬ 
count for one’s own mind or power to think and 
resolve if there is no superior Mind from which to 
derive mind? How did mind, or ability to think, 
originate, if not from a Mind inherent in the uni¬ 
verse? Is not the conclusion of the theist the 
more logical and rational? Is he not at the long 
end of the lever? 


GOD THE GREAT REALITY 


11 


Another and striking argument for the being 
of God is what we may properly term the Biolog¬ 
ical. It pertains to the origin of life. It is the im¬ 
possibility of accounting for vital energy— 
for either vegetable, animal or human life, with¬ 
out the conception of what the great French phil¬ 
osopher, Henri Bergson, calls “an original impetus 
of life.” All know that it has never been dem¬ 
onstrated, or proved by experiment, that life in¬ 
heres in dead or inert matter. If it were possible 
to combine or blend in proper proportions all the 
chemical ingredients of plant or tree or bird by the 
ingenuity of man it would remain inanimate and 
lifeless. It would lack the vital impetus required 
to make it an organism, or thing of life. No man 
has ever been able to produce or discover 
that vital impetus or energy. The finite mind lacks 
the wisdom to create or supply it. The most 
perfect imitation in matter and form of a living 
being that he can possibly invent or contrive will 
be as dead as a door nail from his hand. It will 
never develop into a living force, or energy. It 
has been tried over and over again and as often 

failed. 

The question therefore arises, how account 
for the vital impetus required to produce a living 
body or entity? Whence its origin or source? 


12 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


What does Bergson mean by calling it an original 
impetus of life? He does not offer or suggest an 
answer to the query. He leaves the reader to form 
his own opinion. Can any one doubt that if this 
great modern philosopher should ever give his 
opinion he would be constrained to attribute it to 
the true and living God whom we worship? Could 
he, or any one of sound mind, think of this vital 
impetus as something less than a being of super¬ 
natural wisdom and power? If it is not God, then 
all we can say is that it ought to be. Surely the 
theist is on safe ground, ground that cannot 
be readily shaken. 

If the above proofs and arguments for the 
existence of God are not sufficient to convince or 
satisfy honest inquirers and doubters, there is still 
another argument which must appeal very strongly, 
if not irresistably, removing all reasonable ques¬ 
tion. It is an argument, however, that does not 
belong to the category of proofs from nature or 
life, but to one that transcends them all. It is that 
the greatest moral and spiritual personality this 
world ever knew postively affirmed by word and 
deed the Divine existence. There was never any 
question as to his attitude of mind. He spoke as 
one who knew. 

That such a man as Jesus called the Christ 


GOD THE GREAT REALITY 


13 


actually lived in this world is now universally 
conceded by all students of history. Even his most 
pronounced enemies, those who reject Him as 
their Lord and Saviour, acknowledge his histor¬ 
ical character. From all the records we have of 
Him He lived a life absolutely above reproach— 
was free from guile and fault in all his words and 
deeds. At the same time He was outspoken and 
fearless in his attitude toward all men, whether 
friend or foe. While meek and gentle and reserved 
in manner. He spake with an authority hitherto 
unknown in the religious world. “ Never man 
spake like this man.” It was not self-asserted 
authority, like that of the scribes; but the author¬ 
ity that can come only from the truth within. His 
timely words carried conviction to every unbiassed 
mind; nor could his cleverest adversaries meet 
Him in controversy. 

Now the point I have in mind is this: Could 
such a clear and profound mind, and withal so 
spiritual, be mistaken in his religious convictions? 
Would such a great soul spend whole nights in 
communion with an imaginary deity? Could He 
have been such a self-deceived fanatic? Impossible. 
On the contrary we have every kind of evidence 
that Jesus knew God as He knew his own soul. 
He seemed as conscious of the existence of God 


14 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


as of his own existence. He seemed to know God 
perfectly from the beginning to the end of his min¬ 
istry. Even at the age of twelve He spoke of God 
as his Father to the astonishment of Joseph, and 
Mary his mother. He never deemed it necessary 
to argue with men to prove the Divine existence. 
Rather He spoke as the oracle of God; and the 
people who heard Him and saw his mighty works 
felt that they were in the presence of the Invisible 
King. 

Now in consideration of the foregoing facts 
and arguments do we not get a synthesis of proofs 
and evidences of the existence of God which 
leaves no reasonable ground for doubt? Do 
we need any fuller assurance? Can we honestly 
come to any other conclusion than that the God 
of Revelation is the great Reality on whom all are 
dependent and to whom we owe all that we have 
and all that we are? Are not the evidences of his 
being and claims upon us so strong as to bind us 
and all mankind to recognize Him as the true and 
living God and to make it the great business of 
our lives to love, honor and serve Him? 


CHAPTER II 


The Character of God— His Fatherhood 

It is essential to the Christian life that one be¬ 
lieve not only in the existence of God, but also 
that reasonable and exalted views be held of his 
nature and attributes. It is of course impossible 
for the finite mind to sound the depth or measure 
the breadth of the Infinite and Eternal. “Canst 
thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find 
out the Almighty to perfection?” Certainly not; 
but as intelligent, thinking beings, knowing right 
from wrong and good from evil, it ought not to 
be impossible for us to form just and reasonabl e 
ideas of what the great Author of our being must 
be. Add to this the fact that we have what pur¬ 
ports to be, and bears on its face the evidence of 
being, an authoritative revelation of his character 
and attributes, it ought not to be beyond our cap¬ 
acity to arrive at just views of who and what He is. 

Now it is revealed to us in Holy Scripture that 
God is both our Creator and Heavenly Father. 
There is implied in this conception that He is pos¬ 
sessed with supreme wisdom, power and love. We 
cannot think of Him apart from these attributes. 
The very idea of one capable of being the most 


16 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


high God in so vast a universe makes it impossible 
for us to conceive of Him as being less than the 
highest possible entity in all creative and moral 
perfections. There could not possibly be an im¬ 
perfect Almighty. This would imply a self-con¬ 
tradiction. 

As Creator we may not think of God as liter¬ 
ally an architect or mechanic fully designing and 
planning his vast universe before commencing 
the work of construction. There is no evidence 
that this was the method of creation. The universe 
is not in appearance a mechanical contrivance, 
and cannot be reasonably looked upon as such in 
fact. It is rather an evolution or growth. It was 
not made in a day or in any period of time. The 
work of creation has been a continuous process 
from the beginning, the Creator and the Creation 
working and progressing as it were hand in hand. 
God is in the world as a wise Master Builder, think¬ 
ing and planning and working out his purposes in 
the best way conceivable, eliminating and sup¬ 
plementing, adding and substracting, even as a 
bird builds her nest and lays her young. 

Is this an unworthy conception of the Author 
of the universe? Is this not to circumscribe Him 
in wisdom and power? Rather is it not to exalt 
Him to the highest possible plain of perfection? 


THE CHARACTER OF GOD 


17 


The tribal and the mediaeval conception of God 
made Him a sort of a magician or machine of im¬ 
possible resources, attributing to Him power and 
skill to do any and every imaginable thing, both 
the possible and the impossible, and all by the 
fiat of his word and will, making it perfect in 
an instant. Do the facts of nature and life, does 
reason itself, bear out such teaching? If He could 
have made all things perfect and complete from 
the beginning, we ask again, why did He not 
do it? What purpose could He have had in leaving 
so much imperfection in the world, entailing so 
much suffering and woe? Is it presuming too 
much to say that it was impossible in the nature 
of things that God could have done otherwise than 
He did, being the Soul of goodness as He must 
be? That God can do all right and necessary things 
there is no question, but not the impossible or self¬ 
contradictory. So in thinking of the wisdom and 
power of God we must not ask for or expect the im¬ 
possible or unnatural. He works within and with 
his world with all available resources. Doubt¬ 
less if He could have made every particular 
thing and every person absolutely perfect 
so that no natural or moral law and no Divine 
purpose would ever fail He would have done it. 
We cannot reasonably think of God creating evil. 


18 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


or the conditions of evil, for its own sake, much 
less for the sake of showing his power in punishing 
it; or of permitting it for any purposes save to 
overcome or overrule it for the achievement of the 
„ highest and holiest ends. The truth must be that 
the possibility of evil and sin was involved in the 
best possible world, so that it is not to limit the 
wisdom or power of God to say that He could not 
prevent the entering of either physical or moral 
evil into his world. It is simply to recognize as 
true what is patent to every thoughtful man that 
it is not within the power of even the Infinite to 
do the impossible. 

As to the other attribute of God named in this 
article, that of Love, it is of the greatest possible 
importance that every one receive it as vital to 
his faith. It is of the very essence of the Divine 
Being. “God is love,” said the chief of mystics 
among the chosen Twelve. Jesus was ever most 
pronounced in teaching the truth of the Divine 
love and compassion. In parable and similitude, 
as well as in more direct and explicit language, 
He proclaimed it over and over again. It was par¬ 
ticularly associated with his doctrine of the Father¬ 
hood of God. There is no truth that Jesus insisted 
on more than this attitude of God toward his moral 
creation. Indeed this may be said to be his most 


THE CHARACTER OF GOD 


19 


distinctive contribution to monotheism. The sov¬ 
ereignty of God was recognized and taught by the 
great prophets and exponents of religion cen¬ 
turies before Jesus came into the world, but the 
conception of his nature as the Universal Father 
had scarcely so much as dawned on the human 
consciousness. He was dread Jehovah rather than 
the all-gracious Heavenly Father. He was thought 
of as a God most exacting, and slow to forgive 
transgression. 

It is true that the great lawgiver, Moses, taught 
a more lenient doctrine of the nature of God; yet 
even he reminded Israel that Jehovah was a jealous 
God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon 
their children unto the third and fourth genera¬ 
tion of them that hated Him. 

This contribution of Jesus to monotheism can¬ 
not be too highly esteemed, or too fondly cher¬ 
ished. It reveals the true relationship of the 
Creator to the creature. We know how precious 
the family relation is to most of us. A united fam¬ 
ily is the ideal and pledge of happiness in this world. 
It is next door to heaven. When the family is in¬ 
vaded and divided by a secret or open enemy there 
is little left in that family to make life worth living. 
Now if God is our Father and recognized as such, 
there is little possibility of the family relation ever 


20 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


breaking entirely up, for the Infinite Father 
could never forsake his children however far they 
may wander astray. He is the Father of the most 
wayward and prodigal, and his hand is ever ex¬ 
tended toward them, not willing that any should 
be lost. So the doctrine of the Fatherhood of 
God lays a claim upon our loyalty to Him much 
stronger than that of his relation to us as our 
Creator. 

But how can one believe in the Fatherhood of 
one whom no eye has ever seen, and no ear has ever 
heard and whose loving arms no one has ever felt 
around him? The child knows only the father he has 
often seen and heard, whose voice is to him the 
sweetest music, and who is never so happy as 
when in his loving embrace. Is it possible to con¬ 
ceive of a Heavenly Father and to love Him as 
such, who is without bodily parts and who never 
shows his face or speaks in audible tones? It must 
be confessed that this is not an easy question to 
answer. Is it any wonder that the wisest and best 
men of old were slow in making the discovery? 
There were so many reasons for thinking of God as 
other than a Father—as a mighty power in¬ 
deed—as a great Sovereign and Ruler—that it 
never occurred to the mind of man that He should 
sustain to his creatures anything of the nature 


THE CHARACTER OF GOD 


21 


of Fatherhood. It was an impossible conception 
to the unaided mind of man. How, then, may one 
learn not only to believe in his Fatherhood, but 
also to love Him? 

In order to throw some light on this proposi¬ 
tion the following illustration is offered in the way 
of analogy: Is it not true that the real and true 
Father in the human family centers not in his 
face or form, nor yet in the sound or tone of his 
voice? There are men in every community, heads 
of families, appearing well outwardly, whose chil¬ 
dren scarcely recognize them as their father. In¬ 
stead of running to them gladly on their return 
from business or other resort, sneak away and hide 
in terror from them. On the other hand there 
are fathers of rough exterior and with no outward 
attractions whatever, whose children fairly adore 
them, running with joy to meet and greet them 
and to receive their fond embrace as soon as they 
come in sight. What is it that draws instead of 
repels them on their approach? It is their amiable 
and winning qualities well known by past ex¬ 
perience to their children, though quite invisible to 
the natural vision. Their children do not think of 
them as either plain or comely; they think only 
of the great heart they know to be within them. 
In like manner it is quite possible to think of God 


22 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


as our Father because of those great loving qual¬ 
ities which most characterize Him. As such He 
has been revealed to us by those highly inspired 
souls who have spoken in His name. 

But we are not dependent chiefly on our rea¬ 
soning faculties, nor yet on the testimony of in¬ 
spired apostles or prophets, to give us the assurance 
of the Fatherhood of God. We have what we be¬ 
lieve to be the best possible witness to the blessed 
doctrine, removing all occasion for doubt. 

This is not the place to take up the discussion 
of the doctrine of the Divinity of Jesus Christ; 
that is reserved for another chapter. But this much 
may be anticipated here, that whatever we may 
find ourselves justified in holding as to the nature 
of Jesus of Nazareth, we have abundant proof that 
He was the wisest, the most perfect and the most 
marvelous character the world ever saw or knew. 
There is no doubt that He was all He claimed to 
be and all He is represented as being in the brief 
biographies we have of Him in the Gospels. No 
great scholar or student of history today, of what¬ 
ever school of thought or religion, questions the 
fact that such a person as Jesus, called the Christ, 
once lived in this world as a man among men, 
walked and talked with them, and taught sub¬ 
stantially the doctrines and duties credited to Him 


THE CHARACTER OF GOD 


23 


in those Gospels. It is of especial importance to 
keep this fact in mind in this connection, though 
it be a repetition. 

Now we not only have the word of Jesus for 
the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, we have 
also the witness of his own attitude towards God. 
In all his prayers of which we have any record we 
find Him invariably addressing God as Father, and 
that He taught his disciples to say, 4 ‘Our Father,” 
when they prayed. He kept this idea continually 
before their minds. “Thy Father who seeth in 
secret shall recompense you,” “Your Heavenly 
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these 
things.” “It is the Father’s good pleasure to 
give you the kingdom.” Such was the whole 
tenor of his teaching in speaking to them of their 
duty towards God and their dependence upon 
Him. His faith in God as his Father seemed to 
come nothing short of positive knlowledge. 

From all this it is not only reasonable but al¬ 
together possible for one to believe in God as one’s 
Father and to rejoice in Him as such. To doubt 
it is to doubt the word of the purest and noblest 
being that ever lived on this footstool of God and 
to turn our backs on the most wholesome and 
glorious doctrine ever written or spoken. It is 
just the truth which our souls need and demand; 


24 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


without which we grovel in uncertainty and fear 
and live to little or no purpose. We most naturally 
require it to stimulate and encourage us to per¬ 
severe in right living, whatever may be our ideals 
of ends or motive. That we are morally bound 
to do right because it is right, regardless of the 
prospect of reward or punishment, is ever true; 
but who, without the feeling that God is loving 
and good and the fear of offending Him is always 
able to do it? 

In confining the argument or discussion on the 
Character of God to his wisdom, power and love, 
it was not forgotten that He has other attributes 
that may not be ignored. Holiness, justice, right¬ 
eous indignation and every other quality belonging 
to a complete moral nature inhere in God. He 
would not be a natural Father if He were all affec¬ 
tion and never exacting. He is indeed slow to 
anger, but will by no means clear the guilty. 
He delights in showing mercy, but is not over-in¬ 
dulgent. While love is central in his nature, his 
wisdom leads Him to manifest it with discretion, 
while his almighty power enables Him to over¬ 
come all obstacles to the attainment of his ends. 

And so we conclude that all the known attri¬ 
butes of God are implicit if not explicit in his wis¬ 
dom, power and love. Omniscience, omnipresence 


THE CHARACTER OF GOD 


25 


and omnipotence as well as holiness, justice and 
equity find their perfection in Him. All that mind 
can conceive, the sense of righteousness demand 
and the heart desire inhere in God. In Him there 
can be no lack. 


CHAPTER III 


The Glory of the Father—The Incarnation 

In the preceding chapter it was shown how 
deeply we are indebted to Jesus of Nazareth for 
our knowledge of God in his relation to us as our 
Heavenly Father. The point was made that He 
was the first teacher practically to make this doc¬ 
trine cardinal in the revelation of God; that this 
was his most distinctive contribution, so to speak, 
to monotheism. He kept this great and most 
welcome truth continually before the hearts and 
minds of his disciples. He showed manifestly that 
it was a doctrine fundamental to his ministry and 
mission; that it formed the basis of the Gospel 
of the Kingdom of Heaven. It was the great mis¬ 
sionary motive of his preaching and teaching. 

Now this being true it would seem to follow 
that Jesus must have sustained some unique re¬ 
lation to God not enjoyed by any other man who 
lived in this world. It involves nothing less than 
the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is the doctrine 
that the Son of God, begotten of the Father before 
all worlds, took upon Himself human nature, be¬ 
came flesh and blood, and lived among men as 
man, yet all the while was in his interior nature 


THE GLORY OF THE FATHER 


27 


and being something more than man. As St. John 
says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among 
us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only 
begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” 

Incidentally, but none the less clearly, St. Paul 
gives utterance to the same doctrine in one of his 
epistles; “Have this mind in you, which was also 
in Christ Jesus; who being in the form of God, 
thought it not a thing to be grasped to be on an 
equality with God, but emptied himself, taking 
the form of a bond-servant, being made in the 
likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a 
man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient 
unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore 
also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the 
name which is above every name; that in the name 
of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven 
and things on earth and things under the earth, and 
that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ 
is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 
2:5-11). It is the famous kenotic, or self-emptying 
passage, which has been wont to be looked upon 
as the apostle’s interpretation of the logos doc¬ 
trine of St. John in the first chapter of his Gospel. 
It is proof beyond a doubt that these two profound 
Christian mystics were in perfect accord on the 
doctrine of the Incarnation. 


28 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


Now this doctrine of the Incarnation of the 
Son of God as set forth in the above passages from 
the writings of these apostles, has ever been rec¬ 
koned by the Church throughout the world as 
cardinal and essential in our religion; and justly 
so. Individuals and cults that have persisted in 
denying its truth have not ordinarily been re¬ 
garded as entitled to the Christian name. If Jesus 
Christ was not both Divine and human, if He was 
only one man among many, however great and 
good, then his word is no more authoritative and 
no more to be depended upon than that of other 
founders of religions, and the great sacrifice He 
made on the cross in our behalf counts for no more 
than the sacrifices made by many another great 
soul for the betterment of human conditions. 

But while it is essential to Christian faith and 
duty that one accept and hold to the doctrine of 
the Incarnation, it is not positively required that 
one adopt a clearly defined theory of the doctrine, 
or maintain dogmatically the correctness of the 
gospel stories of the manner of our Lord’s entrance 
into human life. In other words, the truth of the 
Incarnation does not absolutely depend on the 
accuracy of the first and third gospel accounts of 
the virgin birth of our Lord. We know that there 
are many learned and good men who profess to 


THE GLORY OF THE FATHER 


29 


believe heartily in the Incarnation who are not 
fully persuaded that the accounts given in these 
gospels of the miraculous conception and birth of 
the child Jesus are to be taken literally. Their con¬ 
tention is that as neither the oldest gospel, that of 
St. Mark, nor the fourth gospel, St. John, to whom 
the holy mother was committed at the cross, nor 
SS. Peter and Paul in any of their sermons or 
epistles make mention of the virgin birth of Jesus, 
therefore it is not important or incumbent that one 
receive implicitly and in every particular the 
testimony of Matthew and Luke, and that the 
fact of the Incarnation does not depend on the 
miraculous conception and birth stories. It is 
enough for them to know that Jesus lived a per¬ 
fect life, that He taught with an order of author¬ 
ity manifestly higher than all other great 
teachers, that his works of power and love far 
surpassed those of all other men, that He suffered 
and died as a sacrifice for the sins of all men, and 
that He arose from the dead on the third day as 
He had assured his diciples He would. They judge 
the tree by its fruit, is their contention, not by the 
mode of its planting; and it cannot be denied that 
they make a strong case. 

But in the opinion of the author the advantage 
of having and accepting the infancy stories is very 


30 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


great. It gives an historic setting to the doctrine 
of the Incarnation that makes it something more 
than a theory or an ideal. It lays a foundation and 
forms a back-ground which accounts in some degree 
for the extraordinary life Jesus lived and the mar¬ 
velous revelations of godliness He made. If the 
stories of the virgin birth are true in fact and sub¬ 
stance then Jesus would seem to have claims 
for an intimacy with God, so to speak, that should 
make his word an infallible authority—to be de¬ 
pended upon as the veritable word of the Father. 
Without this historic setting there would indeed 
be much ground for belief in his divine Sonship; 
for the words He spoke and the life He lived have 
no parallel in history. All the great and good 
men of whose word and life we have record spoke 
at times with more or less doubt and uncertainty, 
and all betrayed points of weakness in character 
and deportment, coming short of living up to 
their high ideals. But Jesus never spoke with doubt 
or uncertainty, and He never betrayed the least 
moral or spiritual infirmity. His most subtle 
critics and enemies never found a vulnerable point 
of attack, though they tried it over and over 
again. Satan found nothing in Him. All this is 
true, and if we had no further word on which to 
build our faith in the Incarnation this should be 


THE GLORY OF THE FATHER 


31 


sufficient. But if in addition to this witness we 
have good reason for accepting the gospel stories 
of the unique manner of our Lord’s entrance into 
human life, then we have a foundation to stand 
on as impregnable as the everlasting hills. The 
great doctrine of the Incarnation becomes some¬ 
thing more than a pious opinion or theory. Its 
historic character removes it from the categories 
of speculation and criticism, leaving it no longer 
open to doubt or denial. 

One argument urged against the historic verity 
of the gospel stories of the virgin birth of our Lord 
is that they do not agree with one another in 
important particulars. Matthew, e. g. fails to 
mention the shepherds’ vision of the herald angel; 
nor does he tell of their early visit to the grotto 
stable in Bethlehem the morning of the holy 
Nativity, so beautifully portrayed by Luke, nor 
aught about the manger cradle and how it came 
that He was born there. On the other hand Luke 
tells us nothing of the visit of the Magi under 
the guidance of a star; the brutal edict of Herod 
to slay all the male children of Bethlehem 
and round about, nor the flight of the holy 
family into Egypt to escape the wrath of the 
king, nor of the actual murder of the innocents. 
In these details they report differently, though 


32 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


there is no contradiction. In all the essential 
facts the two writers perfectly agree. They 
affirm with equal positiveness that the human 
parentage of Jesus was wholly on the side of 
his mother; that the Holy Spirit w T as his sole Pro¬ 
creator; that He was born in Bethlehem of Judaea; 
that some time later He was taken to the family 
home in Nazareth to spend his youth and early 
manhood, and that his name was called Jesus. 
Whatever the sources were from which the wri¬ 
ters drew T their facts, and it is evident that they 
were not the same, they both show that they had 
perfect confidence in their trustworthiness, and 
that they did not draw on their imagination to 
give color to the picture; much less did either of 
them paint a distorted picture of the Christ Child 
to make Him appear altogether different from 
other children, as did the writers of the Apochry- 
phal gospels of later centuries. On the contrary 
their stories are most beautiful in their sim¬ 
plicity. Nothing could be more delicate or rev¬ 
erent in expression or portrayal. They clearly 
showed that they were anxious only to bear 
honest witness to what they believed to be credi¬ 
ble reports of the unique manner of Jesus’ 
entrance into human life, and they betray no mo¬ 
tive or disposition to make the event more won¬ 
derful than it actually was. 


THE GLORY OF THE FATHER 


33 


The fact that Mark and John make no mention 
of the virgin birth of Jesus in their gospels proves 
nothing, because neither of them touches on his 
life till He was ready to enter upon his active min¬ 
istry. Had they taken up his biography at its 
beginning and made no reference to the miracle, 
the point of this objection might have some 
force, but not otherwise. As a matter of fact the 
ministry of the Man they did portray was 
none the less a miracle than the one portrayed by 
Matthew and Luke, though they did not record the 
tradition of the virgin birth. His entire life was 
a miracle; in word and deed He presented a con¬ 
trast to all other men in that He betrayed no weak¬ 
ness, mental or moral, and gave Himself entirely 
up to “going about doing good.” 

Now while the author of this treatise, after 
having read and examined without bias the ar¬ 
guments pro and con on the subject, finds un¬ 
feigned satisfaction in being able to accept the 
historic verity of the infancy stories as told by 
Matthew and Luke, he is far from denying that 
men may believe the doctrine of the Incarnation 
who cannot conscientiously receive them in their 
literalness. If the doctrine is a real living faith 
with them, as without doubt it is with many, then 
they cannot be denied their claim to Christian 


34 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


discipleship. The essential thing is to believe in 
the Incarnation; for it is idle to claim a right to 
the Christian name and at the same time deny the 
honest testimony of all the sacred writers that the 
the Son of God came in the flesh. Good men and 
worthy citizens there are among skeptics and ra¬ 
tionalists who flatly deny the truth of the doctrine 
of the Incarnation, but they cannot consistently 
call themselves Christians; and they certainly 
have no vocation as Christian teachers. We pass 
no judgment as to their standing in the sight of 
God. We are not their judge. We are contending 
only that the doctrine of the Incarnation is essen¬ 
tial to Christian faith and duty—that these can¬ 
not function normally with denial of this cardinal 
truth of the religion of Jesus Christ. 

The only sense in which men may call themselves 
Christians who regard Jesus as a great teacher of 
religion and ethics, yet deny his Incarnation and 
proper Divinity, is that in which a man may call 
himself a Platonist who believes in the idealism 
of the ancient philosopher, Plato, or a Hegelian 
who accepts the idealistic pantheism of the Ger¬ 
man philosopher, Hegel. But such are not dis¬ 
ciples of these philosophers in the same sense that 
Christians are of Jesus Christ. Their attachment 
is not to a person, but to a philosophy—not to a 


THE GLORY OF THE FATHER 


35 


Saviour, but to an ideal. The Christian’s adher¬ 
ence is first of all to a living Divine Person—a 
present Helper and Saviour—who has all power 
with God because He is one with God. 

That the doctrine of the Incarnation involves 
difficulties beyond the comprehension of the mind 
of man, even the wisest, is not denied, but readily 
confessed; but that is no reason for rejecting it. 
Surely it is no more inexplicable than many self- 
evident verities in the realm of nature. Who, e.g. 
can comprehend boundless space or endless dura¬ 
tion? Who can account scientifically for the ori¬ 
gin and development of either the material or the 
spiritual world? Yet our being unable to com¬ 
prehend or explain these does not make them any 
less real or unquestionable. We know of a cer¬ 
tainty that space and duration are boundless and 
endless, and we know equally well that there is a 
material and a spiritual universe. They are beyond 
all reasonable question. So because we are not 
able to understand how a Divine Person could take 
upon Himself human nature and dwell in his ful¬ 
ness among men it does not follow that it is unrea¬ 
sonable or incredible. If the testimony of his con¬ 
temporaries and companions to the fact is trust¬ 
worthy and the life He lived was in perfect accord 
with the fact, that ought to be sufficient to justify 
us in recei ving the doctrine. 


36 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


Again, it is not necessary to faith in the Incarna¬ 
tion of the Son of God to believe that while He dwelt 
in the flesh He saw all things scientifically as well 
as religiously with unerring understanding. Indeed 
He Himself disclaimed knowing all things. He 
did not, for example, know when the end of the 
old order would take place and the new order dawn; 
(Matt. 24:36) but what He did know was that it 
was bound to come and to teach his disciples how 
to make ready for the great event. He knew in¬ 
fallibly right from wrong, truth from error, spir¬ 
ituality from the spirit of the world. He was un¬ 
erring in all things appertaining to the develop¬ 
ment and perfection of character. He lived as well 
as taught the perfect life of God. His word came 
with authority and power because his life was an 
open book. When the humble and inquiring soul 
heard Him speak it did not doubt that He spoke as 
the Oracle of God. He left no doubt in the mind 
of any honest inquirer after the truth. Every hun¬ 
gry and sin-sick soul that appealed to Him for 
help or relief went away satisfied. Only those who 
came in quest of some pretext for bringing an ac¬ 
cusation against Him went away disappointed. 

The importance of the doctrine of the Incar¬ 
nation cannot be over-stated or over-estimated. 
It is God’s supreme revelation of Himself to man- 


THE GLORY OF THE FATHER 


37 


kind. Though He spoke and wrought through 
lawgivers, poets and prophets, the voice was not 
always clear and distinct, and did not appeal to 
nor deeply impress the masses of men. Even the 
writers themselves spoke at times with more or less 
uncertainty and variableness; and it was not al¬ 
ways easy to reconcile their facts one with the 
other. It is because they were but men, good men 
indeed and evidently moved by the Spirit of God 
to write and speak, but not free from the defects 
of sin and consequent liability to misinterpret 
at times the heavenly message. But Jesus, being 
filled with the wisdom and goodness of God, could 
and did always speak with authority and postive- 
ness. Being complete in all moral perfections, his 
knowledge of the truth was not circumscribed nor 
biassed. His eye was clear and single; no beam nor 
mote ever in it to distort or disturb its vision. 
“His whole body was full of light.^ He was so 
filled with the love of God for mankind that He knew 
even as He was known by the Father. He had the 
vision which St. Paul said would be no longer in 
part after charity or love has done its perfect work. 
Perfect love not only casts out all fear; it removes 
all spiritual blindness and darkness. It enables 
the soul to see eye to eye with God. So Christ 
was the perfect ethical and religious Teacher be- 


38 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


cause He was filled with the light and love of the 
Heavenly Father. In Him was no darkness at all. 
This is true not withstanding the fact that He was 
subject to temptation the same as other men and 
had to keep up perpetual warfare against the same 
soul-enemy that tries every good man. But He 
never failed to triumph over every foe, and there¬ 
fore never failed to bear infallible witness to the 
truth. The records of his trials and temptations 
are not fiction, though we may not be able to re¬ 
concile the fact of his unique relation to the Father 
with the reality of his exposure to actual temptation. 
The question is often asked, “How could the Son 
of God be really tempted to disobey any law of 
God?” The question is indeed a hard one to an¬ 
swer, and it is no wonder that many have stumbled 
over it. Others have adopted the alternative of 
contending that the temptations He was appar¬ 
ently subject to were not real, but only formal and 
for the sake of example. But we know that Jesus 
never dissembled. He was always most real; never 
an actor. That He was most sorely tried and tempt¬ 
ed in the desert and also in the garden of Geth- 
semane there can be no reasonable question. Ow¬ 
ing to his high character as the Son of God it may 
have been morally impossible and doubtless was 
for Him to ever be overcome by temptation. How¬ 
ever that may be, we know that He was actually 


THE GLORY OF THE FATHER 


39 


tempted over and over again, and that the tempta¬ 
tions were such as were calculated to appeal strong¬ 
ly to a great and good man. To resist them He had 
to take the same course as other men when sorely 
tried, that of self-denial and prayer. 

No doctrine of the Incarnation would be ten¬ 
able that denied the reality of the trials and temp¬ 
tations to which Jesus is said to have been ex¬ 
posed. While He ever spoke with the positiveness 
which only one possessing perfect knowledge is 
entitled to speak, and while He lived absolutely 
above just criticism—never under any circum¬ 
stances giving way to any weakness of flesh or spirit, 
He overcame as man, not as God. And this made 
Him capable, from deepest experience, to sym¬ 
pathize fully with mankind in the struggle after 
godliness. He could be “touched with the feeling 
of our infirmities,” because He was “in all points 
tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 
4:15). 

From this point of view we see how important 
it was that the Son of God should empty Himself, 
as St. Paul says, and take the form of a servant and 
dwell as a man among men. It qualified and enabled 
Him, through actual experience, to perfectly un¬ 
derstand our weakness and needs, and to sympathize 
with us in all our troubles and temptations. At 
the same time He was able to show us the Father— 


40 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


to speak with the authority of both experience 
and that of a worthy and trusted Son. Well 
could He say, as no other ever could or in his right 
mind ever did say, “I am the way, the truth and 
the life. No one cometh unto the Father but by 
me.” (John. 14:6). 

Not only was the Incarnation necessary to 
voice the mind of God toward mankind, it was 
also necessary to reveal the heart of God. Until 
the Son of God came in the flesh and laid down his 
life in sacrifice for the sin of the world could or 
did men learn that the chief and most glorious attri¬ 
bute of God is love, an attribute which finds its 
highest expression in sacrifice. This was a con¬ 
ception of the Divine Being scarcely even dreamed 
of by the great priests and prophets of religion 
before Christ. Here even the great Plato, one of 
the wisest and noblest expounders of philosophy 
and religion among the ancients, fell short, for he 
had no thought of carrying his idealism past the 
point of dealing out strict justice to his fellow-man, 
and that only so far as to involve no great sacri¬ 
fice or suffering. None of the great founders of 
religions before Christ, or even since, ever con¬ 
ceived of God as capable of suffering in behalf of 
the needy and sinful. Their God was ever im¬ 
passive—incapable of suffering. The great sac¬ 
rifice which the Son of God made in dwelling among 


THE GLORY OF THE FATHER 


41 


men, living in poverty, enduring the agony of 
base ingratitude, suspicion and false accusation, 
and finally dying on a Roman cross at the beckon 
and hands of those He came to save, sets God be¬ 
fore us in a light entirely new and unsuspected in 
the world. 4 4 Scarcely for a righteous man will 
one die, yet for the good man some would even 
dare to die; but God commendeth his love toward 
us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died 
for us”. (Rom. 5 :7,8). 

It is not the intent of this chapter to discourse 
at length on the doctrine of the atonement, though 
that doctrine is involved in what has just been said. 
This was necessary in our endeavor to show the 
completeness of the Incarnation. It brought God 
down to our human nature in the fulness of his 
character as nearly as that is possible from our point 
of view, revealing Him in his highest perfection 
and setting Him before us in the most attractive 
light conceivable. Whether the Son of God would 
ever have become incarnate had not sin abounded 
in the world we can only conjecture. It is not 
inconceivable; for it may be that it would have 
been the only way God could reveal Himself to the 
understanding of man. But this much seems clear: 
that owing to the need caused by sin we get a view 
of the capacity of God to suffer not otherwise pos¬ 
sible. 


CHAPTER IV 


The Love of the Father—The Atonement 

There is no doctrine more insisted upon in the 
Holy Scriptures than that of the Atonement. 
Whatever theories—true or false—and they are 
many, which devout and learned men have thought 
and worked out, or defended, concerning the atone¬ 
ment, all have contended for its great importance 
and vital necessity to the redemption of erring 
mankind. No man who believes at all in Divine 
revelation can possibly look upon the doctrine of 
the atonement with indifference or unconcern. 
He feels too deeply that he owes a debt to God too 
great for him to meet or discharge by any act or 
offering of his own. In some way he must get re¬ 
lief and that relief must come from a higher than 
human source. 

The word “Atonement” is not found in the 
latest and best versions of the New Testament, 
the word, “Reconciliation” taking its place as 
being the more accurate and consistent ren¬ 
dering in the light of the spirit of the Gospel. In 
his epistle to the church in Rome, St. Paul writes, 
“We also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus 
Christ, through whom we have now received the rec- 



THE LOVE OF THE FATHER 


43 


onciliation.” This rendering is in better accord with 
the preceding verse, which reads in both the old and 
the new versions, “While we were yet enemies, 
we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, 
much more being reconciled shall we be saved by 
his life.” In the light of these quotations from 
St. Paul and of others which might be cited it is 
obvious that the New Testament meaning of the 
Greek word, katallagen, is reconciliation, and 
that the word, atonement, when referring to the 
sacrifice of Christ, must be so understood. What¬ 
ever significance it may have had to Old Testa¬ 
ment writers, this is what it meant to the writers 
of the New. 

Now this fact seems to have been lost sight of, 
or much obscured, in the minds of most of the older 
Christian exponents of the doctrine of the atone¬ 
ment, all carrying the idea that the sufferings and 
death of Christ were primarily and chiefly to rec¬ 
oncile the Father to us, to appease his wrath, sat¬ 
isfy divine justice, magnify the law and make it 
honorable; thereby so changing the attitude of 
God toward man as to make it consistent and safe 
to forgive him his sins and to treat him as guiltless 
in the sight of heaven. But the fact is, there is not 
a single text in the New Testament that can be 
fairly construed to show that Christ suffered to 


44 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


reconcile his Father to us, or to prove that it was 
necessary for Jesus, or any one else, to die to pla¬ 
cate God, satisfy his sense of justice, or move 
the Divine compassion. On the contrary the 
word everywhere is that it was God’s love, 
never his wrath, that moved Him to give up 
his Son in sacrifice for our redemption. The 
whole trend of the Gospel is in this direction; in 
fact that is the Gospel. In parable and similitude, 
in word and deed, it seemed to be the chief aim 
and end of Jesus to set forth this blessed truth. 
He never qualified it in any way whatever. 

It should be distinctly understood at the outset 
that no theory of the atonement can be approved 
or tolerated which conveys the idea that there was 
ever any necessity of changing the mind or heart 
of God toward mankind in the process of salvation. 
True, the offering of Jesus on the cross was in an 
important sense a sacrifice to God, but not for the 
purpose of appeasing his wrath or of winning his 
favor. Such an idea is repugnant to all Gospel 
teaching. It was never God who needed to be 
reconciled or changed, but man. It should be ever 
kept in mind that God Himself was the prime 
mover in the work of reconciliation. “God was in 
Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imput¬ 
ing to them their trespasses.” 


THE LOVE OF THE FATHER 


45 


Thus Father and Son were equally concerned 
in the atoning sacrifice. Jesus, though full of com¬ 
passion, was not more compassionate than the 
Father. The Son could do nothing apart from the 
Father, according to his own testimony. The 
Father could not require of his beloved Son a sacri¬ 
fice which He Himself would not willingly make 
and practically did make. What father does not 
suffer equally with his son who voluntarily takes 
his life in his hand to save his country from its 
enemies? Can we think of the God and Father of 
Christ as being less deeply concerned in the great 
sacrifice for the sins of the world than his only 
begotten Son? Mr. D. L. Moody once said, “I 
used to think of God as a stern judge on a throne, 
from whose wrath Jesus Christ had saved me. It 
seems to me now that I could not have had a falser 
view or idea of God than that. Since I have be¬ 
come a father I have made this discovery: That 
it takes more love and sacrifice for the father to 
give up the son than it does the son to die.” That 
is the way every true father must feel; and can we 
think of the Father of Christ as being less capable 
of paternal feeling than an earthly father? 

At the same time it must not be thought a 
light thing for God to forgive and treat as his chil¬ 
dren those who have wilfully and grievously broken 


46 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


his Holy laws. It must be borne in mind that the 

laws of God are as sacred and eternal as his own 
nature. It is all-important that they be honored 
and kept inviolate by every creature made in his 
image. To dishonor them, or to allow others to dis¬ 
honor them with impunity, is repugnant to the con¬ 
ception of either a righteous or a merciful God. 
This fact must not be ignored in any discussion of 
the doctrine of the atonement. Mankind must 
never forget that as violators of Divine law their 
forgiveness and restoration to the favor of God 
involved infinite cost. What God in his Son suf- 
ered to this end can never be told. It is past all 
possible calculation. 

For many people, probably the great majority 
of the race, it is sufficient for them to believe and 
understand that upon repentance of sin and faith 
in Jesus Christ God freely forgives them, whether 
or not they entertain sound views of the doctrine 
of the atonement. They have never committed 
any very dreadful sin or crime against God or man 
—any act of lawlessness far-reaching in its effect, 
doing irreparable injury or grievous wrong to any 
individual, family or state. They have lived and 
moved about quietly in their neighborhoods, harm¬ 
ing no one intentionally and always minding their 
own business. Their sins have been for the most 


THE LOVE OF THE FATHER 


47 


part sins of omission rather than of commission. 
It would seem to be enough for them to confess 
their sins and ask God to forgive them in Christ’s 
name and to help them to lead better lives. They 
are probably far from being what they might or 
ought to be, but they cannot be classed among the 
really bad or wicked. 

But there are those, and their number is legion, 
who do not come under so favorable a head. There 
are those who are conscious of having committed 
sins wilfully, under strong temptation, or great 
provocation, which not only injured themselves, but 
others, and up to that time, innocent persons, and 
that to an extent irreparable. They have been 
guilty of breaking up peaceful and happy homes, 
or injuring the good name of neighbors and com¬ 
petitors, or of destroying virtue in manhood or 
womanhood, or of having deceived and robbed 
creditors and squandering the spoils. Broken 
banks, in which large sums of money and other 
securities had been placed for safe-keeping by hard¬ 
working and confiding people who were trying to 
lay up a little store to meet an obligation, or to 
have something to draw on in old age or other in¬ 
firmity, tell the story of awful guilt. There are 
divers ways in which men have done grievous 
wrong and injury to others which must lie upon 


48 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


their conscience, when once their moral sense has 
been awakened, like a cancer on the liver, eating 
out their very life. Is there any conception of the 
atonement adequate to give relief to one staggering 
under the burden of such awful guilt? Can it be 
possible for such a one to find grounds for believing 
and feeling that his sins are all forgiven and the 
slate against him rubbed clean? Can he ever again 
hold up his head and stand in the presence of God 
as one no longer guilty or under condemnation? 

Many well-meant efforts have been made to 
evolve a theory of the atonement equal to the task 
of meeting so serious a condition—a theory so well- 
grounded and satisfactory as to make the vilest 
sinner and basest criminal feel, on repentance, as 
one innocent in the sight of heaven. But who has 
ever found any of these theories satisfactory or 
tenable in the light of sound criticism or revela¬ 
tion? Dr. R. G. Cambell, of Brighton, England, 
after stating the case clearly and forcibly, under¬ 
takes to solve the enigma by making God primarily 
and actually responsible for the origin and existence 
of evil and sin, thereby binding Him to provide for 
the cancellation of guilt, or the removal of the 
entail between man and his responsibility for his 
sins. But his argument in defense of his position 
or theory is what logicians would call a paralogism, 


THE LOVE OF THE FATHER 


49 


a fallacy in reasoning of which he seems to be un¬ 
conscious. It fails to satisfy either reason or con¬ 
science. It savors too much of the old sophism, 
“Let us do evil that good may come.” To make 
God accountable for sin is to make Him ungodly. 

Any theory of the atonement that undertakes 
to make it provide for the elimination of the sense 
of guilt in the conscience of one who has committed 
sins involving consequences which can never be 
avoided or reversed, wronging another or others 
beyond the possibility of righting, cannot be ac¬ 
cepted or tolerated. It is unreasonable and im¬ 
moral. The sacrifice of Christ was never designed to 
achieve such an objective—to perform so hopeless 
a task. That would imply a moral impossibility. 

But that is no reason for concluding that the 
divine sacrifice was to no purpose in behalf of the 
penitent, however guilty in the sight of heaven. 
On the contrary it finds a far higher virtue and 
effectiveness. The divine compassion goes out in 
all its depth and fullness towards such unfortunate 
victims of sin and guilt; and while it does not save 
them from the immediate consequences of their 
sins, much less from the consciousness of guilt, it 
can and does give them encouragement and support 
in bearing their punishment, and at the same time 
shows them the way and moves them to do works 



50 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


meet for repentance. It does not leave them in 
hopeless case, nor to bear their burden all alone. 
The Divine Redeemer suffers with and in them, 
making it possible for them to bear their burden, 
however grievous. 

And here is where the sacrificial offering of 
Christ counts for most. While it serves to deepen 
man’s sense of guilt and unworthiness as he looks 
upon the Cross and realizes that he has part in that 
awful tragedy, he beholds in the face of the inno¬ 
cent sufferer such divine compassion that he is 
moved to respond humbly and heartily to what¬ 
ever sacrifice and service he may be called upon to 
render. He is encouraged thereby to not permit 
his sense of guilt and unworthiness to hinder him 
from at once enlisting for service, but rather to 
stir him up to greater diligence in efforts to redeem 
the time lost while living in mortal sin. Thus the 
Cross becomes his salvation. 

When the persecutor, Saul of Tarsus, heard, as 
he was on his way to Damascus in mad pursuit of 
the disciples, the beseeching voice of Jesus saying, 
“Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” and learn¬ 
ing who it was who spoke to him, though prostrated 
with an awful sense of shame and guilt, he did not 
despair, but cried out imploringly, “Lord, what 
wilt thou have me to do?” He was so mightily 


THE LOVE OF THE FATHER 


51 


moved by the compassionate voice of Jesus that he 
was ready at once to give heed to his word and 
align himself with the hitherto despised disciples. 
He wanted to do something without delay to 
atone for the irreparable wrong he had done in pur¬ 
suing the disciples with murder in his heart. 
Though assured of the divine forgiveness, he was 
not relieved of the consciousness of guilt. Nor did 
he ask or even covet such relief. He was too great 
a soul for that. We know that he never could for¬ 
give himself for his work as a persecutor; and why 
should he expect to be immune from all penalty? 
Yet he was made to feel at once that he had such 
a friend in Jesus as to move him to devote himself 
with all his redeemed powers to the cause of Him 
whom he had so madly persecuted. 

Saul well knew that he could never bring back 
the soul of St. Stephen—that he never could undo 
the grievous wrong he had done him and the others 
whose persecution he instigated and encouraged. 
The sense of guilt for those crimes must ever weigh 
upon his quickened conscience. He was willing 
enough to suffer for that. He would not have been 
a real man had he felt otherwise. But because of 
the compassion of Christ as manifested in his cross 
and passion, he was moved and enabled to do and 
to endure more for the spread of his kingdom than 


52 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


any and probably all of the other apostles. Noth¬ 
ing was too big or too hard for him to undertake— 
no risk of life too great for him to make in the Mas¬ 
ter’s service. He held not his life as of any account, 
as dear unto himself, if only he might accomplish 
his course, and the ministry he received from the 
Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God. 

What now must be our conclusion as to the 
efficacy of the sacrifice of the death of Christ in its 
bearing on our salvation? In what sense may it 
be looked upon as an atonement for our sins? How, 
in other words, does it avail for the guilty? Not, 
as already seen, by appeasing the anger of God 
toward the guilty; for it was God in Christ recon¬ 
ciling the world unto Himself. Nor could it have 
been to suffer as a substitute the penalty of broken 
law, that the guilty might go scot free from all the 
consequences of his sins. Guilt is altogether too 
personal for that. It can never be transferred to 
another. All such theories of the atonement—all 
such attempted solutions of the perplexing prob¬ 
lem—fail to satisfy either reason or conscience. 
They certainly find no justification in any fair 
interpretation of the Gospel. They must all be 
peremptorily ruled out. 

Is there then no way out of the dilemma? To 
the mind of the writer the only theory that can be 


THE LOVE OF THE FATHER 


53 


defended, though he does not claim that it clears 
up every difficulty, is that which is implied in the 
word “reconciliation”, obviously the better render¬ 
ing of the Greek word “katallagen”, as used by St. 
Paul in Rom. 5:11. It reconciles man to God, not 
God to man. It removes the enmity in the human 
heart towards God, not any emnity in the Divine 
heart; for the sacrifice of Christ was the revelation 
of the Divine clemency which always obtained, 
and never had to be purchased by any one, Divine 
or human. The cross reconciles the sinner to God 
by convicting him of sin, moving him to repentance 
and enabling him to take up his own cross in the 
name of Christ to work out his own salvation. And 
this is his atonement—his at-one-ment, his recon¬ 
ciliation, his redemption. And God in his mercy 
accepts his repentance and service, however imper¬ 
fect it may be, and welcomes him back into his 
loyal family. 

The only sense in which it may be said that 
Christ in his death bears the penalty of man’s sin 
is in the person of the penitent soul. The new man 
in whom Christ dwells—the Christed man, as 
Horace Bushnell would call him—suffers for the 
man he was formerly, that is, before his conver¬ 
sion. As Kant puts it, the good man takes upon 
himself the sins of the wicked, and stands in his 


54 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


place before the judge. Thus it is the Christ within 
him, not apart from him, who suffers for him. In a 
similar sense St. Paul speaks when he says, “Never¬ 
theless I live; yet not I, but Christ that liveth 
within me.” 

Whatever relation to the law or government 
of God the sacrifice of Christ may sustain must 
be reckoned as beyond our ken. That it does sus¬ 
tain some important relation thereunto—that it is 
esteemed in heaven as something more than a moral 
dynamic to subdue and bring to repentance and 
good works the enemies of God—is by no means 
denied. Without doubt many of the theories of the 
atonement worked out by sincere and learned men 
of old contained some grains of truth. But that 
the chief objective of the sacrifice of the Son of God 
was to vindicate the righteousness of God rather 
than to conquer enmity in the human heart toward 
God, is, in the light of the Gospel, without convinc¬ 
ing proof. Is not the whole Gospel summed up in 
the words of Jesus familiar to us all: “God so 
loved the world that He gave his only begotten 
Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not 
perish, but have eternal life. For God sent not 
his Son into the world to judge the world, but that 
the world through Him might be saved?” No 
theory of the atonement that loses sight of this 


THE LOVE OF THE FATHER 


55 


text, or that attempts to qualify it in support of 
such theory, can be tenable or worthy of considera¬ 
tion. It is the whole Gospel of the reconciliation 
that is therein contained, and that reconciliation is 
not to effect a change in the heart of God towards 
man, but a change in the rebellious heart of man 
towards God. The Son of God did not come into 
the world to move the compassion of the Father— 
to make Him propitious, but to turn the heart of 
humanity God ward and heavenward. The estrange¬ 
ment was not in the heart of God, but in the heart 
of man. If any one doubt this sentiment let him 
read the Parable of the Prodigal Son, our Lord’s 
own picture of the attitude of his Father toward 
his wayward children. There is no suggestion or 
hint in this parable of an intermediary or friend 
coming in between the father and the son to suffer 
in the prodigal’s stead, or to entreat the father’s 
compassion. Being a true father no such condi¬ 
tions were required. It was enough for the son to 
return in penitence and manifest a readiness to 
serve his father again in any capacity. The father 
was more than willing to welcome him home and 
treat him as a son. Such a Father is God. 

In this article on the Atonement no one could 
be more sensible of its defects and limitations than 
the writer himself. Certainly it fails to answer 


56 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


many questions which any student of the Old and 
New Testaments might readily and rightfully ask. 
That there is vastly more in the great sacrifice 
which the Son of God made for the sins of the 
world than is herein brought out has already been 
and is freely acknowledged. There was no inten¬ 
tion to treat the subject exhaustively, even if that 
were possible. It should always be borne in mind 
that the atonement, or reconciliation secured to us 
through Christ, was not accomplished by His 
death upon the cross alone but by all that He was 
and is and by all that He did and still does to 
bring man into fellowship with God. The purpose 
of the article is accomplished if the affirmation has 
been made good that the doctrine generally called 
the atonement, but more accurately termed “recon¬ 
ciliation”, is one of the Great Essentials of the 
Christian faith and life. 


CHAPTER V 


The Great Power of the Father— 

The Resurrection 

The Resurrection of the dead has ever been 
reckoned by the Catholic Church as a cardinal doc¬ 
trine of our religion, apart from which Christianity 
has no distinctive meaning or message. Jesus 
taught it clearly and insistently, confirming its 
truth by becoming the first fruit thereof. The dis¬ 
ciples were so thoroughly convinced of the fact 
that He rose from the dead that they diligently 
held it up in their ministry as of greatest possible 
moment because it was to them the sure token of 
their own resurrection. The one involved and was 
the sure token of the other. “If the dead rise not,” 
St. Paul argued, “then Christ was not raised, and 
if Christ be not raised all gospel preaching is vain, 
faith is vain and all men are left in hopeless sin. 

If the credibility of the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ depended chiefly on the documentary evi¬ 
dences available, there is none more complete or 
adequate for any fact or event in all ancient his¬ 
tory. The number and character of the witnesses 
speak in strongest terms. Men and women of purest 
minds and motives, who at first were so doubtful 
that they did not even look for his reappearance in 


58 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


their midst, but visited the tomb as we visit the 
graves of our loved ones today, are witnesses whose 
testimony cannot reasonably be ignored. When 
they found the tomb empty they were overwhelmed 
with disappointment and sorrow. Instead of the 
thought instantly occurring to them that He had 
fulfilled his promise of rising from the dead, they 
suspected that there had been a grave robbery— 
that his enemies had stolen his body away. How 
otherwise, they reasoned, could the tomb be 
empty? They well remembered that the door of 
the tomb had been blocked with a great stone and 
sealed with the imperial seal of Rome, and also 
that it was guarded by details of Roman soldiers. 
How could it be opened save by the soldiers them¬ 
selves, or with their consent? 

But happily the disciples were not left long in 
doubt and anxiety. Proof that there had been no 
grave robbery by an enemy was too near at hand; 
for though the body of Jesus had disappeared from 
the tomb, He Himself had not gone far away. In 
fact He was there all the time and was ready to 
manifest Himself to the disciples as soon as their 
eyes were open to see Him. First He appeared to 
Mary of Magdala, whose mind He had relieved of 
a dreadful obsession, and whose love for her great 
Deliverer was deepest of all. Then He appeared to 


THE GREAT POWER OF THE FATHER 


59 


the other devoted women who came hurriedly after 
Mary to assist her in completing the embalming 
left unfinished on Good Friday night. Then He 
showed Himself to Peter and John who were first 
among His chosen to visit the tomb on the morning 
of the third day. Later the same day He appeared 
to two other disciples on their way to Emmaus, 
walking and talking with them and sitting down 
with them at meat. At one time, St. Paul tells us, 
He appeared to more than five hundred of his dis¬ 
ciples simultaneously; so he had been credibly 
informed; and he does not doubt the word because 
he himself had been granted a vision of the risen 
Lord long after his reported ascension, and there¬ 
fore could testify from personal experience that 
He was alive indeed. So why should we doubt the 
witness of those who declared they saw Him before 
His ascension? 

Whether or not the disciples were able to 
behold the risen Lord by their natural sense of 
sight we are not explicitly informed, but are left to 
draw our own conclusion. The important thing is 
the assurance that they actually saw Him. It is 
not necessary to faith in his resurrection to believe 
that the disciples saw Him by natural vision, for 
we know there is a deeper power of vision than that 
of the natural eye. It is not improbable therefore 


60 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


that it was by this deeper power of sight the dis¬ 
ciples saw their Lord after He rose from the dead. 
In fact it seems almost necessary that they should 
have had such power of vision to enable them to 
see Him at all in his risen form. We do not indeed 
know the nature of the change that had taken 
place in his body when it was raised up, but we 
know that it must have been very great to enable 
Him to appear and disappear so quietly and sud¬ 
denly, oblivious to solid walls and all barriers of 
space and time. In all probability something had 
to be done and was done to open the disciples eyes 
to enable them to see and know Him. We know 
that even Mary Magdalene, spiritually minded as 
she was, could not see Him at his first Manifesta¬ 
tion. Her vision was not clear and deep enough 
as yet. The disciples of Emmaus must behold Him 
break bread, as it were a new celebration of the 
Holy Supper, before they were able to recognize 
Him. Time and again He would be in the same 
room with them for some moments before they 
realized that He was present. It is significant also 
that though He was seen by so many men and wo¬ 
men during the forty days between his resurrection 
and ascension, He was seen by his friends and fol¬ 
lowers only. Why should He withhold Himself 
from the vision of his enemies if it had been pos- 


THE GREAT POWER OF THE FATHER 


61 


sible for Him to manifest Himself to them? Did 
He not come into the world to save them as well as 
His disciples, and would not their seeing Him after 
His resurrection have led to the conversion of at 
least some of them? The natural inference is that 
they could not see Him because they lacked the 
spiritual vision necessary. Does not this indicate 
that it was with eyes touched with the light of 
heaven that enabled the faithful to behold their 
risen Lord? 

Another reason for thinking that Jesus was not 
visible to the naked eye after his resurrection is 
the marvelous manner in which He was raised. It 
was obviously not by anything like a mechanical 
process or dynamic. It was not a physical miracle 
in the ordinary sense of the word. It belongs to a 
different and higher order of operation. According 
to both the apostles, Peter and Paul, the power 
with which Jesus was raised up was the glory of the 
Father. Peter told the astonished people who wit¬ 
nessed the healing of the lame man at the gate 
Beautiful of the temple, that God glorified his ser¬ 
vant Jesus whom they crucified, thus raising Him 
from the dead. Paul gives utterance to the same 
sentiment in his epistle to the Romans, telling them 
plainly that Christ was raised by the glory of the 
Father. (Rom. 6:4.) Does not this witness remove 


62 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


the resurrection of the Lord from the category of 
the material and earthly and raise it to the realm 
of the spiritual and heavenly? A flood of heavenly 
light and love was poured out upon Him, filling 
the tomb with a glory unearthly, whose warmth 
and radiance penetrated and permeated His whole 
nature and personality so that it was impossible 
for the grave to hold Him longer. The glory of the 
Father found its most natural function in raising 
up his beloved Son. It was ground most fertile 
and ready for such fruitage. Glory responded to 
glory, truth to truth, purity to purity, love to love. 
The glory of the Father pouring like a flood of 
light upon Him, as the sun of the solar system upon 
the natural world in spring-time, causing vegeta¬ 
tion to sprout and come forth to life again, so how 
natural and inevitable that He should awake and 
rise from the dead to die no more! And as it was 
a spiritual operation that caused Him to rise, so 
He must have been in a form after his resurrection 
too unearthly for human eyes to look upon Him 
untouched by heavenly light and power. 

But however the disciples w T ere enabled to see 
their Lord after his resurrection, whether by 
spiritually aided or by unaided vision, it is certain 
they were not mistaken or deceived. Had they 
been they could never have kept up courage and 


THE GREAT POWER OF THE FATHER 


63 


interest so long under such trying circumstances, 
much less accomplished so much for the spread of 
a doctrine based on imagination or fiction. As 
Lord Salisbury once said, “There is no event in 
history better attested than the fact that Jesus 
Christ rose from the dead, for without this fact the 
existence of Christianity is itself absolutely ^ex¬ 
plainable.” Not only did the disciples go about 
everywhere preaching the word in the face of the 
most violent opposition, gathering congregations 
for worship and service, but in His name they 
healed the sick, cured the lame and halt, unstopped 
deaf ears, and even brought the dead back to life. 
They accomplished the greater works which He 
promised them they should be given power to do 
in His name. Much as they valued the memory 
of His companionship and personal ministry before 
His departure from them, and much as they stressed 
the loving sacrifice which He had made for their 
sins by His death on the cross, it was the risen and 
living Christ which they ever held up as the great 
power of God unto salvation. They were fully 
persuaded that He was not only alive, but that He 
was very near at hand; yea, nearer than hands and 
feet. It was this consciousness of Christ within 
them that made them strong and even bold in the 
face of all manner of opposition to preach the Gos- 


64 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


pel of the Kingdom. They were as certain that He 
was alive and present with them as they were that 
He lived and walked with them before his cruci¬ 
fixion. 

But why is belief in the fact that Jesus Christ 
was raised from the dead essential to the Christian 
life and hope? Could we not be his faithful fol¬ 
lowers just the same had He not been raised up— 
had He remained in the lap of earth like other great 
and good men? Impossible. It must be borne in 
mind that Jesus was a humble man, not a person of 
worldly distinction or royalty—that He had no 
reputation among the wise and great of earth; 
that He was put to death as a capital criminal, not 
as a prophet; that He had no name in the world 
like the founders of other great religions to help 
in keeping alive his memory. Everything there¬ 
fore depended on his rising again from the dead and 
making Himself known to His disciples to give 
them assurance at the beginning of His living pres¬ 
ence and power. Nothing less could have sustained 
them in their ministry in the face of such violent 
opposition as they encountered. Had He not 
actually risen again it is doubtful if He would have 
had any following after His death, and it is certain 
He would have none today. He was unknown, or 
at least unrecognized, by the profane historians 


THE GREAT POWER OF THE FATHER 


65 


of His day. Even Josephus, who must have at 
least heard of Him ignored Him. If He was known 
to any Jewish historian or pagan he was very care¬ 
ful to make no mention of His name lest he might 
help rather than hinder the spread of His Kingdom. 
There were few, if any, unbiassed historians in those 
times. 

It was the disciples’ conviction that He was 
alive and among them which eventually forced His 
name into the pages of history and gave vitality to 
a movement that has proved farther reaching and 
wielded a wider influence for good than any religion 
or other powerful movement the world has ever 
known. Nothing less than the consciousness and 
assurance of a present living Saviour could ever 
have given such impetus to a thoroughly spiritual 
religion like the Christian. 

Now the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ is important not only because it assures us of 
a living Saviour, but also because it is the pledge 
and token that all those who die to sin as He died 
to the world of sense shall rise with Him to a new 
and endless life. As St. Paul says, “If we died with 
Him, we believe that we shall also live with Him; 
knowing that Christ being raised from the dead 
dieth no more.” That is, has passed beyond the 
dominion and power of death, whether in this 


66 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


world or in the world to come. In other words, our 
union with Him in His death and resurrection is 
the pledge of immortality and eternal life. 

Observe that our resurrection with Christ is 
two-sided, according to Paul’s analogy. It is both 
a resurrection from the power of death in this life 
and in the life of the world to come. We should 
never think of the resurrection of the dead apart 
from the resurrection which is accomplished when 
the new life in Christ begins in us. It is this first 
rising from the dead that should be our great con¬ 
cern, for unless we have experienced this resurrec¬ 
tion the other can be nothing to us because we have 
no part in it. Whatever may be the nature of the 
body in which the faithful appear after mortality, 
we know that it is not the same body that was laid 
away in the grave. As St. Paul says, “ It is not that 
body that shall be, but a bare grain . . . but God 
giveth it a body even as it pleased Him, and to each 
seed a body of its own. (I Cor. 15:37-8.) In other 
words, As the resurrection of Christ was a spiritual 
operation, so must be the resurrection of those who 
die in Him. It begins when one first puts on Christ, 
that is, becomes united to Him by faith. The rising 
again from mortal death is the completion of the 
spiritual process begun at conversion. 

There is and can be no resurrection to life for 


THE GREAT POWER OF THE FATHER 


67 


those who deny Christ by giving themselves up to 
self-seeking and general lawlessness. It was a later 
and less spiritual theology, not the theology of the 
New Testament, that discriminates radically be¬ 
tween the resurrection before and after death. 
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he 
that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall he 
live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me 
shall never die.” Again, He said, “The hour com- 
eth and now is when the dead shall hear the voice 
of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” 

Just what St. Paul meant by “the body that 
shall be” being spiritual we do not know; it may 
not have been clear in his own mind. But this 
much he did know, and that is that it was not 
ordinary flesh and blood, and that it was a body 
that had no existence apart from its living entity, 
the soul. That this view of the resurrection does 
not agree with the traditional dogma that the dead 
in Christ must wait in some intermediate state 
till the end of the world, or of this dispensation, 
for their reunion with their glorified bodies then 
to be raised up from their graves is freely admitted. 
But why should that disturb our faith in the resur¬ 
rection? Nowhere in the New Testament can a 
statement be found fairly justifying the traditional 
view. It is an inference at best, and one which 


68 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


utterly ignores Paul’s doctrine of a spiritual body, 
a body very different from the body that was buried, 
but a germ of life springing up like new wheat from 
decaying seed. According to Paul’s similitude, As 
the grain of wheat sown in the ground does not 
itself come up, but in dying releases the germ of 
life which does spring up, and that into new and 
larger life and fruitage, so the death of the body 
of man releases the soul in order that it may be free 
to take on new and permanent form, like unto the 
old, indeed, but so different in kind as to be imper¬ 
ishable in its very nature. “To each seed a body 
of its own,” but not the same body. It is a body 
adapted to its new and nobler state. 

Whether this view of the character and manner 
of the resurrection of Christ and of the dead in Him 
is correct or not the writer is far from speaking 
with authority. It is offered for consideration 
because it seems to him to be fairly in harmony with 
both the letter and spirit of the Gospel and at the 
same time most reasonable and credible. It removes 
it from the category of the material and mechanical 
and raises it to a plane in keeping with so exalted 
a condition and destiny. The point, however, may 
not be of first importance, though it seems to the 
writer to make the doctrine of the resurrect on 
easier to receive. It is the fact of the resurrection, 


THE GREAT POWER OF THE FATHER 


69 


not the character and manner thereof, that most 
deeply concerns us. As to how the dead are raised 
up and with what manner of body they come forth, 
we may differ widely and still remain Christian. 
But if we deny the fact and reality of the resurrec¬ 
tion of Christ and of the dead in Him, and hold 
with the Saducees of old that there is no resurrec¬ 
tion, neither angel nor spirit, then we certainly can 
lay no just claim to the Christian name and are 
without a well-grounded hope in God or the life 
of the world to come. 


CHAPTER VI 


Exalted to the Right Hand of the Father— 

The Ascension 

If it is essential to the Christian life and hope 
that one believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ 
from the dead, the same must be said of the report 
of His ascension and consequent departure from 
the visible world. The Catholic Church has always 
commemorated the fortieth day after Easter as 
one of the five great festivals of the Christian year. 
In so doing equal emphasis is put on the great 
occurrence with Christmas, Epiphany, Easter and 
Whitsunday. This plainly implies that the Church 
holds the ascension of Christ as fundamental in 
its creed and life. Do the facts justify the Church 
in taking this stand? It is the aim of this article 
to show that the stand is well taken—that the 
ascension was the natural and necessary sequel to 
the resurrection of the Lord, without which even 
His resurrection could not have achieved its 
exalted purpose. 

According to the author of the Acts of the 
Apostles the scene of the Ascension was witnessed 
by one hundred and twenty men and women who 
had been among his faithful followers prior to His 
crucifixion. So St. Luke had been credibly in- 


THE ASCENSION 


71 


formed, and he had substantial evidence of the 
trustworthiness of the word. St. Paul was also a 
firm believer in the testimony of the witnesses, for 
he refers to the fact of the Lord’s Ascension repeat¬ 
edly in his epistles, finding great satisfaction and 
significance in it, as we shall see later in this article. 
While St. John does not report the scene of the 
Ascension in any of his writings, he quotes the 
words of Jesus forecasting the fact. “No man 
hath ascended into heaven but He that descended 
out of heaven, even He that is in heaven.” Again, 
“What and if ye shall behold the Son of man as¬ 
cending up where he was before?” And again, to 
Mary Magdalene on the morning of His resurrec¬ 
tion, “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to 
my Father, but go unto my brethren and say to 
them, I ascend unto my Father and to your Father, 
and to my God and your God.” The fact that 
neither St. Matthew nor St. Mark records the 
scene of the Ascension, (the reference at the end of 
the latter’s gospel being by a later hand,) is no 
evidence that they did not know about it. It is 
plainly implied in the closing words of Matthew’s 
gospel where he records the great commission, “ Go 
ye into all the world and make disciples of all the 
nations . . . . Lo I am with you always, even to the 
end of the age.” Whether or not St. Mark intended 


72 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


to or actually did record the fact of the Ascension 
we do not know, for his gospel was abruptly broken 
off in the oldest mss. at the end of the eighth verse. 
It matters not; for we know that many important 
facts and incidents in our Lord’s life and ministry 
were not witnessed by all who wrote about Him; 
but that does not impeach the testimony of the 
witnesses, whether one or many. 

Now the fact of the Ascension of our Lord being 
so thoroughly established by so many faithful and 
true witnesses, witnesses too, who laid so much 
stress upon it, it follows that it must have been 
an event of great significance. But it must not be 
concluded that because He ascended into the 
heavens in the sight of the disciples He then and 
there actually departed from them to be no longer 
with them in any form or manner. That would 
have been to prove untrue to His own word, “Lo, 
I am with you always.” A cloud indeed received 
Him out of their sight; but it was only a cloud, 
and it did not prevent his speedy return to them to 
make good his parting promise. In fact his ascen¬ 
sion was essential to his more perfect and per¬ 
manent presence among them. As St. Paul says, 
“He that descended is the same also that ascended 
far above all heavens that He might fill all things.” 
i. e., that He might with the Father become a per- 


THE ASCENSION 


73 


vasive presence, able to appear in spirit and power 
to each and all his followers at all times and in all 
places unimpeded by any barriers. 

But does not the word say that when He as¬ 
cended into or through the heavens He sat down 
at the right hand of God? True, but what and 
where is the right hand of God? Of course it is a 
figure of speech, but it is very significant. With 
most men the right hand is the stronger; it is the 
hand with which they do the most and best work. 
It is in this light that we must think of the right 
hand of God, that it represents the great power and 
love of God. As the exercise of that power, or 
those attributes is omnipresent as well as almighty, 
so to sit on the right hand of God is not to sit on 
some exalted throne high up in the heavens, far 
away from the inhabitants of this planet, but to be 
wherever the right hand of God holds forth. In 
other words, the session of our Lord at the right 
hand of God is a condition and vantage-ground 
far-reaching and unlimited by time or space. The 
great truth is, our Lord’s ascension was really his 
transcension. As St. Paul says, “He that des¬ 
cended is the same also that ascended far above 
all the heavens, that He might fill all things. 

It was the consciousness of the transcendent 
presence or imminence of Christ that comforted 


74 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


and supported the disciples in their ministry when 
the whole world was against them. Though they 
looked for a speedy return of their Lord in the form 
and manner in which they saw Him depart, to 
take up his reign among them as their Messiah, 
they never doubted that He was with them in 
spirit and continually. They were evidently mis¬ 
taken about the time and manner of his return, 
but not of the reality of his presence among them. 
Their expectation of a more manifest personal pre¬ 
sence on his part did not lead them to act as though 
He was absent. To illustrate: When Peter and 
John were asked by a life-long cripple at the gate 
“Beautiful” of the temple for alms, Peter replied, 
“Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have 
give I thee.” What then did he have, if not money? 
It was something infinitely better than money or 
any other material asset. It was Jesus Christ that 
the apostle possessed; for in that name he com¬ 
manded the cripple to rise up and walk. Where 
was Jesus but within Peter to enable him to speak 
with such assurance and helpfulness? When St. 
Stephen was being stoned to death and his lights 
were going out he had an unearthly vision, the 
glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand 
of God, not afar off, but evidently very near at 
hand. Saul of Tarsus, in spite of his bitter opposi- 


THE ASCENSION 


75 


tion to the Church, had some such vision of the 
ascended Christ, and he ever afterwards lived and 
labored in the joy of that presence. In writing to 
the Galatians he says, “I am crucified with Christ, 
yet I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in 
me.” Though Paul, like the other apostles and 
evangelists, looked for a personal visible return of 
Christ in his day, he did not doubt that He was in 
and with him all the time, enabling him to speak 
in His name the words of life. His mystical mind 
was able to grasp and to rest in the essential truth 
of the divine presence and power which was ever 
at his command, while at the same time indulging 
the hope of a more manifest revelation of Messiah’s 
kingdom in his lifetime. The truth is, Paul ever 
lived in the power of his Lord’s ascension and trans- 
cension. 

Another reason why the ascension of Christ is 
so significant is that it was the exaltation of human 
nature. In the ascension our humanity is taken up 
into the life of God. Far from its being the renun¬ 
ciation of human nature which He took upon Him¬ 
self when He was born into this world, it was His 
enthronement. It was, as it were, our human 
nature entering upon its true heritage. It signified 
the spiritual and eternal in man asserting its 
superiority and power over the material and 


76 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


temporal. Jesus did not depart to dwell alone with 
God, but to unite mankind unto God. His exalta¬ 
tion is our exaltation. His enthronement our 
enthronement, His coronation our coronation. 

This sublime truth is portrayed most beautifully 
and forcibly in the last verse of that best of all the 
ascension hymns, by C. Wordsworth: 

“Thou hast raised our human nature 
On the throne to Gods right hand; 

There we sit in heavenly places, 

There with Thee in glory stand. 

Jesus reigns adored of angels; 

Man with God is on the throne; 

Mighty God in thine ascension, 

We by faith behold our own.” 

No words could better express the purpose and 
achievement of the ascension than that exalted 
sentiment. It removes it far away from the materi¬ 
al and sensuous category and makes it preeminent¬ 
ly spiritual. In other words, it makes the departure 
of our risen Lord in His ascension the pledge of a 
high and more perfect union with our humanity. 
The Head of humanity becomes enthroned— 
seated on the right hand of power to perfect the 
union between God and man. In Him, our ascended 
Lord, we sit together in heavenly places. We are 
exalted unto the same place whither He Himself 


THE ASCENSION 


77 


has gone, and our life is hid with Him in God. 
Henceforth to those who abide in Christ heaven 
and earth are not far apart, but merge into one 
another. The world of sense now obscures the 
vision, but the great reality obtains. Something 
like this St. Paul must have had in mind when he 
wrote to the churches, “Set your mind on things 
above where Christ is, seated on the right hand of 
God.” 

Another way of setting forth the glorious truth 
of the exaltation of humanity in our Lord’s ascen¬ 
sion is in that it declares the great possibility and 
opportunity of our humanity. It is that of becom¬ 
ing God-like—of experiencing in our lives the reality 
of the divine image in which we were created—of 
attaining unto the measure of the stature of the 
fullness of Christ. Humanity has a place by right 
of creation as well as of redemption in the nature 
of God. It is not an alien by creation in the Divine 
Family. It is not inherently a stranger to God. 
Sin and sin only is responsible for the present 
estrangement obtaining between God and man. 
The pure in heart always enjoy the vision of God. 
Jesus’ return to the bosom of His Father with His 
added humanity shows us what it is our privilege 
to obtain. Where He is there we may be also and 
continually dwell. We do not have to die, save to 



78 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


sin, in order to enter the heavenly mansions where 
Jesus went to prepare a place for His disciples. 
He is ever coming to His own and making His 
abode with them, receiving them unto Himself. 
Where Jesus is there are the heavenly mansions, 
and they are never far off from His faithful servants. 

Thus there is set before us in our Lord’s ascen¬ 
sion the glorious possibility and opportunity of our 
human nature. It is that of being joined to Him in 
eternal union with the Father—of having our 
humanity taken up into the life of God. It is to 
become in Christ transfigured—transformed into 
the divine likeness. 



CHAPTER VII 


The Promise of the Father—The Holy 

Spirit 

In the chapter on the Ascension one important 
purpose of the marvelous transition in the life of 
our Lord after his resurrection was omitted; not, 
however, because it was forgotten, but because it 
comes under another head. It will be remembered 
that before His crucifixion Jesus gave to His dis¬ 
ciples as His chief reason for departing from them 
that they might be prepared to receive the Father’s 
promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Com¬ 
forter. “It is expedient for you that I go away; 
for if I go not away the Comforter will not come 
unto you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you.” 
What does He mean? Why could they not receive 
this precious gift while He remained in bodily form 
with them? The answer is, for the reason that they 
were in no state of mind to experience in their 
hearts his own indwelling so long as they were able 
to look upon his outward person and form. For 
what or who is the Holy Spirit in reality but the 
Spirit of the Father and the Son? Whether we 
think of the Holy Spirit as the third person of the 
Holy Trinity or not, it is certain that He is one 


80 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


with Christ in His essential nature. Nor may we 
conceive of Him as having any office or work 
independently of Christ. Their aims and ends are 
so closely associated that there is no marked line 
of distinction—no work in which both are not 
equally and vitally interested and employed. On 
the contrary it is the distinctive office and work of 
the Spirit to show and declare Christ unto the dis¬ 
ciples. “When He the Spirit of truth is come He 
shall guide you into all truth; for He shall not 
speak of Himself; but whatsoever things He shall 
hear, these shall He speak; for He shall take of 
mine and shall declare it unto you.” Earlier in the 
same gospel Jesus declares that the Holy Spirit 
will be sent by the Father in His name; and again 
He speaks of Him as sending the Spirit from the 
Father, so closely are the three associated one with 
the other in all things. Does not this clearly show 
that the indwelling of the Spirit with the individual 
disciple and in the Church is not something dis¬ 
tinct or different from the indwelling of Christ, but 
practically one and the same? The Holy Spirit was 
and ever is the Spirit of the Father and the Son, 
having no separate existence from them. As our 
Lord was about to take his final departure He 
called his chosen before Him and breathing on 
them, said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose- 


THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER 


81 


soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; 
whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” 
Clearly it was the Spirit within Himself, not an 
objective Spirit, so to speak, that He then and 
there sacredly pledged them. It was probably at 
this time that He gave these disciples their great 
commission in which He assured them that He 
would be continually with them even to the end of 
the age. That was the way He intended to keep 
his promise, i. e., by imparting to them the Holy 
Spirit of his Father ever one with Himself. 

The Holy Spirit has always been in the world 
working both in nature and in the human heart 
and life. Wherever good meaning men and women 
have devoted their time and energies to bettering 
human conditions, whether among Jews or gentiles, 
the Spirit of the Father and the Son inspired them. 
They were not alone in the world. Who can doubt 
that such great souls and ethical teachers and 
leaders as Confucius, Sakyamuni, Socrates, Plato, 
Aristotil, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca 
in the pagan world, and Moses, Samuel, David, 
Elijah and even Mohammed among monotheists 
were powerfully moved by the Holy Spirit in their 
day and generations? True they may not all have 
understood that a higher spirit—the Spirit of the 
living God, was moving them in their efforts to 


82 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


uplift and save their fellow mortals, much less 
have known Him by name; but the fact that they 
devoted themselves so ardently to the Spirit’s work 
shows that they were inspired by the Spirit of the 
one living and true God. 

It is the testimony of the Pentetuchal writers 
that it was the Spirit of God moving upon the face 
of the chaotic waters of the earth that caused the 
division of land and water, thereby making it 
habitable to man and beast. The same spirit 
breathed into the nostrils of primitive man made 
him a living soul patterned after the Divine image 
and likeness. It was the Spirit of God symboled by 
the Shekina, that led the children of Israel out of 
Egyptian bondage through the Red Sea into the 
wilderness of Arabia and finally out of it across the 
river Jordan into the promised land of Canaan. 
The same Spirit inspired law-giver, poet and pro¬ 
phet to speak and write for the instruction and 
admonition of their own people and for all coming 
generations. “No phrophecy” says an inspired 
writer of a later day, “came by the will of man, but 
men of old spoke as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost.” (2 Pet. 1:21.) It was the same Spirit 
overshadowing a Nazarene virgin that enabled her 
to give birth to the Son of God. The same spirit 
came to the baptism of Jesus at the Jordan, appear- 


THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER 


83 


ing in the form of a dove, and descending upon Him 
as He went forth from the waters, declaring Him 
to be the beloved Son of God. 

Thus we see that the Holy Spirit was always in 
the world, from the very beginning mightily mov¬ 
ing upon the hearts of men here and there to speak 
for God and to move them to works of goodness 
and righteousness. At the same time He was 
striving perseveringly and patiently with the dis¬ 
obedient and wayward to bring them to repentance, 
visiting upon them divers punishments for their 
iniquities, but ever showing readiness to forgive 
them when penitent and to receive them into the 
Family of God. 

Not, however, till after our Lord’s resurrection 
and ascension was it possible for the Spirit to come 
in the fullness of his power and efficiency and with 
wide-reaching and telling results. It was not till 
then that the hearts of the entire band of the dis¬ 
ciples were in such a state of preparation that 
they could as one man respond to the proffered 
gift and improve and enjoy it in adequate measure. 

The first great outpouring of the Holy Spirit 
was most timely, viewed at least from the standing- 
point of the Jew. It transpired on one of the great 
festal days of the Jewish year. It was the day of 
Pentecost, the day that had been set apart under 


84 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


Moses to commemorate the giving of the law from 
Mt. Sinai—a day of general obligation, and also 
of rejoicing for the first fruits of the harvest. How 
very fitting it was that the great outpouring of the 
Spirit and the consequent ingathering of converts 
in great numbers for the young Church should 
transpire on the anniversary of the festal day com¬ 
memorating the giving of the moral law and the 
gathering of the first sheaves of the harvest of 
golden grain! How significant that as the giving 
of the law from Mt. Sinai converted the Israelites 
into a Nation, binding the tribes together by com¬ 
mon bonds, the event should be celebrated by the 
gift of God, the promise of the Father, that should 
resolve the disciples of Christ into a living Church 
that should stand for all time, overcoming its 
enemies within and without! 

The nucleus of the Church had indeed been 
gathered and formed prior to that day, as the 
material of the nation of Israel had been nurtured 
and held within bounds under Moses before the 
law was given from Mount Sinai. But the breath 
of spiritual life had not so completely filled it as to 
make it a living soul. It knew as yet little of the 
spirit of the Founder. It had yet to be awakened 
to an adequate sense of its great mission and op¬ 
portunity for service in the world. It was practi- 


THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER 


85 


cally without vitality till that eventful day. It had 
the outward visible form, but lacked the indwelling 
Christ. Hence the day of Pentecost which followed 
closely upon the ascension of our Lord has always 
and most fittingly been commemorated as the 
birthday of the Church. Without the great gift 
which was bestowed in such a wonderful way and 
measure that day on the little band of waiting dis¬ 
ciples, which had gathered from day to day after 
the ascension in memory of Jesus, they could not 
have held out very long. They could hardly have 
survived their generation. They would soon have 
dispersed and scattered, leaving scarcely a land¬ 
mark of the short sad history of the movement. It 
would soon have become but a fading memory. It 
would have been without the necessary or vital 
spark to keep it alive. 

But the Holy Spirit not only gave life and char¬ 
acter to the Church when it was first established, 
it has sustained its life ever since, and that in spite 
of a different spirit early finding its way into it. 
As it breathed into the Church the breath of life 
on that first great festal day, making it a living 
soul, so by its continual presence and energy it has 
kept it alive and at work from generation to genera¬ 
tion. Sometimes its enemies of one kind or another 
seemed to have brought it very near the verge of 


86 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


destruction; but each and every time some great 
soul, filled with the Holy Spirit, has risen up to 
rescue it and give it new and larger life. A St. 
Francis, a Savanarola, a Luther, or some other 
lesser light has had his eyes open in time to save 
the Church from the hand of the destroyer. 

Thus we perceive the great importance and 
necessity of the gift of the Holy Spirit to the life 
and perpetuity of the Church. We cannot pos¬ 
sibly over estimate or overstate that importance. 
The practical indifference of so many in the 
Church today to the office and work of the Holy 
Spirit is responsible for the comparatively slow 
progress it is making toward making the world its 
conquest. If even a large proportion of the mem¬ 
bership of the Church would open their hearts to 
let the Spirit in there would be no lack of ministers, 
evangelists, teachers, or any other class of Chris¬ 
tian workers. The harvest would be fully supplied 
with laborers. There would be no dearth of minis¬ 
ters —no crying need for more candidates for holy 
orders. The supply would be equal to the demand. 

All that makes the Lord of life dear to the 
heart is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Apart 
from the Spirit there is no love for Christ or his 
cause. From first to last He is the creative and 
ever active agency in accomplishing salvation. It 


THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER 


87 


is his office to convict the guilty and to turn the 
hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. 

The whole process of regeneration depends on 
the operation of the Holy Spirit. “Except a man 
be born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter 
into the Kingdom of Heaven.” He must be born 
from above. It is the Spirit that gives efficacy to 
both the written and the spoken word, making it 
as it were a two-edged sword for both defense and 
conquest, striking at sin in the heart and bringing 
the disobedient and lawless to repentance and 
faith. God, Christ, Heaven, eternity become real 
only to souls open to the gift of the Holy Spirit. 
He is the inspirer of all unselfish and noble thoughts, 
all worthy motives, all holy aspirations, all high 
aims and ends. The same Spirit that in creative 
morn brooded over the unsettled waters of primi¬ 
tive earth and brought order out of chaos, is pres¬ 
ent today to work in us, if we will let Him, such a 
change in our chaotic aims and ends as will make 
our lives fruitful in all good works. It is the Spirit 
who sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts, 
enabling us to keep the first and great command¬ 
ment and the other like unto it. It is the Spirit 
that bears witness with our spirits that we are the 
children of God. It is the Spirit that helps our 
infirmities, giving us the power of resistance in 


88 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


the face of temptation. It is the finger of God 
working within us to enable us to drive out the 
evil spirits that disturb our thoughts and motives. 
There is no want or need in man, no condition of 
mind or heart, that God cannot meet and satisfy 
with the plenitude of his power and grace in the 
gift of the Holy Spirit. That blessed Spirit is the 
unfailing fountain of life, of truth, purity and power, 
of spiritual energy and beatitude. It is what makes 
the truly good and pure minded man radically dif¬ 
ferent from the selfish and sensual man. These two 
types of mankind are actuated by motives as wide 
apart as the poles; there is little in common 
between them; and it is all because one is led by 
the Holy Spirit and the other by the spirit of the 
world, or that spirit which St. Paul calls “the 
mind of the flesh”. 

Do we exaggerate the importance of the office 
and work of the Holy Spirit in our religion? Then 
Jesus did also. He seemed even to exalt the person 
and position of the Spirit above his own. He told 
the Pharisees who accused Him of casting out 
demons in the name of Beelzebub, “You are com¬ 
mitting the eternal sin. You may speak a word 
against the Son of Man and be forgiven, but if 
you blaspheme against the Holy Spirit it shall 
not be forgiven you.” (Luk. 12:10, Mrk. 3:29.) 


THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER 


89 


St. Paul solemnly warns his converts to the Chris¬ 
tian faith against grieving the Holy Spirit of God, 
because by Him they were sealed unto the day of 
redemption. (Eph. 4:30.) The truth is, Chris¬ 
tianity is preeminently a spiritual religion, and for 
that reason it cannot live or grow apart from the 
continuous presence and activity of the Holy 
Spirit. Without the Spirit it may have a name to 
live, but in reality it is dead. It is the Spirit that 
giveth life. 


CHAPTER VIII 


The Incarnation Extended—The Church 

In the preceding chapter the important fact 
was dwelt upon at some length that on the recur¬ 
rence of the first day of Pentecost after Our Lord’s 
ascension the Holy Spirit was poured out in such 
measure on the assembled disciples that they were 
filled with new and abundant spiritual life; and 
attention was also called to the fact that as one 
result of that outpouring of the Spirit a new 
Ecclesia, or Church, took on organic form and 
began to function as a mighty spiritual power in 
the world. Thousands were then and there con¬ 
verted to the new faith and were admitted through 
Holy Baptism into the fellowship of the apostles 
and brethren. And it is added that they continued 
in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in breaking 
of bread and in the prayers. It meant nothing less 
than the extention of the Incarnation that had 
apparently been given up at the cross. 

It is evident that the disciples understood this 
to be the fulfillment of their Lord’s promise to 
build his Church on the apostles as foundation 
stones, Himself being the head corner stone. From 
this we are bound to conclude that belief in organ- 



THE INCARNATION EXTENDED 


91 


ized Christianity, or the Church, is a fundamental 
article of the Christian faith, and that steadfast 
adherence to the same is the duty of all. To claim 
to be a follower of Jesus Christ and to refuse fel¬ 
lowship with his disciples is practically to deny 
Him. 

There are those who say they believe in Christ 
—in His teachings and example—but they do not 
believe in the Church. In other words, they believe 
in Christianity, but not in “ Churchanity”, as they 
characterize it. Now those who talk in this way 
and make that their pretext for withholding fellow¬ 
ship from the Church show plainly that they 
neither understand Christianity nor Christ. They 
ignore the Lord’s plain teaching, and they are 
ignorant of the Spirit who gave the Church its life. 
The Church meant everything to its Divine Foun¬ 
der. He loved it in anticipation, and counted no 
sacrifice too great for its security and happiness. 
St. Paul says, Christ loved the Church even as the 
true husband loves his wife and finds his chief joy 
in pleasing her. For what is the Church but the 
Body of Christ, of which He is the head and the 
disciples its several members? What is it but the 
extension of His Incarnation? The Church is the 
eyes and ears and mouth and hands and feet of 
Christ, to see and hear and speak for Him and run 



92 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


on his errands of love and do His mighty works. 
He lives in and for His Church, and Christianity 
lives and flourishes only as it adheres to His Body, 
the Church. 

The Church is not a hierarchy, existing for the 
exaltation of a priestly cast, exercising despotic 
power over the laity for exploitation or other un¬ 
worthy ends. Neither is the Church a club or a 
guild, much less a secret order, with a carefully 
selected membership for mutual protection and 
congenial companionship. It is not made up of 
favorite individuals, or groups, who happen to be 
of kindred tastes, or socially on a level. It does not 
confine itself to localities or regions which promise 
most in the way of financial support or political 
influence. The Church is a Divine Society or organ¬ 
ism which is equally open to all sorts and conditions 
of men, admitting freely and gladly each and all 
who can be persuaded to accept the reasonable 
and necessary conditions of membership. It is 
the whole body of believers in Christ and their 
children, all standing on an equal footing of obliga¬ 
tion and opportunity for service and fellowship. 
In it each and every member may, by the faithful 
performance of duty, rise to position and power 
according to the measure of his gifts and talents. 

While the Church has its recognized officers 


THE INCARNATION EXTENDED 


93 


and heads, they are not self-constituted or self- 
appointed, but chosen on their merits or supposed 
merits and fitness, by the general congregation of 
disciples, and set apart by their predecessors in 
office, no infallible head being recognized or 
acknowledged save Jesus Christ Himself. This, 
at least is the ideal, though as yet far from being 
realized in any part of the world. 

Without this Divine organism it is safe to say 
that Christianity could not have perpetuated it¬ 
self, much less have become the mighty power for 
good it is today. Like all great movements it had 
to have organization. This was necessary, not 
only for self-defense, but for propaganda and con¬ 
quest. It had to be properly officered and have 
certain rules and regulations. It is in the world, 
not for selfish gain, but for the world’s eternal 
good. To this end it must devise ways and means, 
and draw on every available resource; and this it 
could not do without organization, any more than 
a free state could exist and flourish without a con¬ 
stitution. 

Now because the Church has been much mis¬ 
understood and perverted by ambitious and bigoted 
ecclesiastics it is discredited in the minds of many 
today. But this reason for discrediting and hold¬ 
ing aloof from it cannot be justified or excused by 


94 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


any fair minded man. While the Church is a 
Divine institution it is necessarily constituted of 
imperfect human beings who greatly need its 
fostering care. As a matter of fact the Church is 
designed for a school of learning and discipline for 
all sorts and conditions of men, not for a choice 
collection of saints. It is perfectly natural therefore 
that it should be subject to great abuses, and that 
evil-minded men and imposters should find their 
way into it and get in their mischievous work. 
There was one Judas Iscariot among the chosen 
of Christ, and if the Founder of the Church could 
be imposed upon under his immediate supervision, 
is it surprising that His Church should be still 
exposed to a like peril? It is owing to this fault 
of human weakness and perversity that it has come 
so far short of its high ideals and of reaching fully 
its great objective. Had it not betrayed this weak¬ 
ness it would be supreme and all-powerful for 
good in the world today, and long ago the King¬ 
dom of God would have begun to enjoy universal 
dominion. But this was impossible in a world 
dominated by beings who are free moral agents. 
And so the progress of the Church in making the 
world its conquest has been seriously interrupted 
and retarded. 

But this is not peculiar to the Church. All asso- 


THE INCARNATION EXTENDED 


95 


ciations for mutual protection and improvement 
have suffered from the same cause. No progress 
toward high ideals has ever been made without 
struggle and discouragement. The infirmities and 
faults of human nature are ever in evidence, and 
they take on as many evil and ugly forms as there 
is variety in human nature. Envy and jealousy, 
pride and selfishness, ignorance and superstition, 
hatred and violence and all the other faults and 
vices will soon or late manifest themselves to the 
detriment of the best organizations and institutions. 

One of the greatest hindrances and drawbacks 
to the growth and welfare of the Church and find¬ 
ing its source in the narrowness and perversity 
of human nature, is the unhappy divisions which 
began to disturb it very early in its history. Over- 
zealous ecclesiastics and propagandists in all periods 
have diligently formulated opinions and dogmas 
which they endeavored to force on the consciences 
of all others, and failing, started cults of their own 
and called them churches. The result has been 
unnumbered divisions and subdivisions, sadly 
wounding the Body of Christ who prayed that His 
disciples might be one even as He and the Father 
were one. 

These unhappy divisions are caused not only 
by differences in points of doctrine, but also in 


96 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


ecclesiastical government and polity. Some can 
see no possible unity for the Church that is not 
centered in one infallible human head, or at least 
in a college of high ecclesiastics, self-perpetuating 
and with all authority to bind and loose, and whose 
edicts and dogmas must be accepted and obeyed 
without question or demur. Their unspiritual 
minds cannot conceive of a unity that depends 
chiefly on voluntary submission to the authority 
of Christ. That is a conception entirely too broad 
and liberal for them. It would leave them totally 
devoid of power, the only kind of power they know. 
This erroneous view is held not only by the Roman 
and Eastern Church authorities, but also by a strong 
and influential minority in the Anglican commun¬ 
ions. Others think of the Church as composed 
entirely of voluntary and self-constituted associa¬ 
tions, each making its own rules and regulations 
and formulating its own creeds, regardless of tradi¬ 
tion, holding itself in nowise conditioned or bound 
by those of any other association of Christians. 
They may believe in what is called a federation of 
churches, that is, in the right and even advisability 
of the different denominations agreeing to co-oper¬ 
ate along certain lines for mutual improvement, 
social betterment, temperance and the enforcement 
of law, but each retaining its distinctive doctrines 


THE INCARNATION EXTENDED 


97 


and ecclesiastical polity. This is the attitude of 
the Congregationalists, the Baptists and other 
denominations of Christians of more or less promi¬ 
nence and influence. 

Now both these extreme ideas must be aban¬ 
doned or greatly modified before the Church can 
reasonably hope to become so united as to con¬ 
serve and exercise its inherent potency for good in 
the world. One restricts liberty of thought and 
action to such an extent as to defeat its rightful 
aims and ends. There can be no spiritual growth 
or zeal for human betterment where there is no 
freedom of thought or spontaniety of effort per¬ 
mitted or countenanced. The tendency is to stim¬ 
ulate self-interest and the love of power for its 
own sake on the part of those in authority, rather 
than real interest in the Kingdom of God. A large 
degree of freedom to think and to act must be 
allowed in order to healthy growth and develop¬ 
ment. But if, on the other hand, this liberty knows 
no bounds—if it is under no restriction whatever— 
it soon begins to run to abuse, and the result is 
religious anarchy instead of spiritual unity. The 
peril of extremes is well-known to us all. It is one 
thing to compromise with error, and quite another 
to strike a middle ground where the error is avoided 
or rendered harmless and the truth is conserved. 


98 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


The worst enemy of the truth is the man who can¬ 
not see but one side of it and refuses to reckon with 
those who see the other sides. 

The only view of the Church as an organism 
which seems safe and sound is one which recognizes 
the necessity of some form of government and dis¬ 
cipline, or polity, that will ever stand for and main¬ 
tain those principles of truth and virtue essential 
to character building and social and civic better¬ 
ment which Christ Himself clearly enunciated and 
insisted upon in His preaching and teaching. This 
means that there must be recognized some author¬ 
ity properly constituted to which all are bound to 
give diligent heed. It must be an authority that 
will exercise its power, not arbitrarily, but reason¬ 
ably and righteously and without partiality, and 
at the same time removable for cause. 

Now as some form or organization is essential 
to permanent unity, the question is, what is the 
form most approved and adapted to this end? As 
the Church is a Divine institution, built on the 
foundation of apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ 
Himself being the head cornerstone, is it not reason¬ 
able to conclude that its polity should conform 
as nearly as possible to that which the Holy Spirit 
led the early disciples to adopt? True we may not 
know what that polity was in every detail; but we 


THE INCARNATION EXTENDED 


99 


cannot greatly err as to the essentials. Broadly 
speaking do we not find that it was in a very 
important way both episcopal and congregational? 
Apparently the whole body of the disciples had a 
voice in shaping the organization into a working 
agency and force. At the start they had all things 
common; they were equal in point of authority. 
No one lorded it over the others. The apostles, 
it is true, were looked up to as spiritual guides and 
teachers, but not as autocrats or prelates. They 
exercised no authority without taking the whole 
congregation into counsel. When the Seven dea¬ 
cons were chosen and set apart to their special 
ministry both the apostles and the rest of the dis¬ 
ciples took an active part in the deliberations. 
The apostles did not act independently or arbitra¬ 
rily. At the suggestion of the apostles the body of 
the disciples selected from among their number 
those whom they deemed best qualified to dis¬ 
charge the duties of that office and ministry, and 
the apostles set them apart to their duties by the 
laying on of hands with prayer. It is fair to con¬ 
clude that this was the usual practice subsequently 
in making additions to the ministry, both as to 
deacons and presbyters, during the first century, 
though it is not expressly so stated. We also ob¬ 
serve that very early in the history of the Church 


» 




> > a 


100 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


the immediate successors of the apostles, or those, 
at least, who exercised certain functions of the 
apostles, began to be called bishops, a name which 
at first had been applied alike to all the presbyters. 
From this we draw the reasonable inference that 
it was intended from the beginning the Church 
should be under episcopal supervision; but by an 
episcopate not self-chosen and self-perpetuated, 
but chosen by the body of the disciples, each and 
every one having an equal voice in the selection. 
This tended both to safeguard the liberty of the 
individual and to conserve the best interests of the 
whole Church. 

Now it seems to the writer that if this con¬ 
ception of the Church and its polity had always 
obtained it would never have suffered the many 
unhappy divisions we deplore today. It would 
have saved it from intolerance and bigotry on the 
one hand and from sectarianism and endless strife 
and discord on the other. It would have kept it 
from wordly ambition and every other hindrance 
to its healthy growth and influence. It would have 
been always united in the one great objective of 
winning the world to Christ and thereby bringing 
the nations and tribes into friendly relations, 
making war impossible and everywhere promoting 
peace and good will among men. 


THE INCARNATION EXTENDED 


101 


But this was more than could be expected of 
our poor and imperfect human nature. In fact 
had human nature been so susceptible and respon¬ 
sive to its best interests the task of saving the world 
would not have been involved, much less have cost 
the awful sacrifice of the life of the Son of God; for 
the world would not have needed saving. It would 
have been a different world from the first. In the 
nature of things that could not be, or God would 
have made it so. Therefore the problem has been and 
will long be that of bringing complete harmony out 
of the original chaos with which humanity began. 

Nothing is intended in what has been said 
above to reflect either on the proposed federation 
of Churches or on non-episcopal communions 
commonly called Churches. Far be it from the 
writer to discredit what God has so obviously 
blessed. That the federation of churches is good 
as far as it goes there can be no reasonable question. 
As a step in the direction of real Christian unity it 
has undoubted merit. It brings Christians together 
on friendly relations and in good works and labors 
of love, thereby giving them some idea of what it 
means for brethren to dwell together in unity. 
Surely it is far better than the sectarian strife and 
discord which formerly so generally obtained. But 
as a permanent solution of the problem of Chris- 


102 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


tian unity, or a cure for the unhappy division of 
Christendom, it cannot be depended upon or com¬ 
mended. The divisions will still exist and be only 
temporarily smoothed over at best. 

As to the right of the non-episcopal communions 
to call themselves and to be called churches it is 
freely conceded. They are truly churches because 
they are congregations of believers in Christ. But 
the unfortunate thing about it is that so long as 
they remain separate and distinct from one another 
and from the historic Church, there can be no real 
or corporate unity. They continue rigidly inde¬ 
pendent and will refuse to recognize the claims of 
others in anything. Besides there are no sacra¬ 
mental ties to draw and hold them together. In 
this world of visibility something more than mystic 
ties are required to keep together and in working 
harmony the Body of Christ. There must be the 
outward sign or form, as well as the inward spirit 
or grace. In the historic episcopate we have this 
outward sign or form of unity because it reaches 
back to the early days of the apostolic Church in 
substance as we have it today. But where there 
is no such order of ministry recognized there is 
lacking an important link in the bond of unity. 
Conceded that it is better to have detached organ¬ 
izations of Christian workers than to have no 


THE INCARNATION EXTENDED 


103 


churches at all, yet how much better would it be 
if we had the outward as well as the inward bond 
of unity! It would do away with the unholy rivalry 
and the overlapping of denominational lines, with 
the consequent waste of time and means resulting 
from a half dozen or more congregations ministered 
to by as many half paid clergy, where two or three 
self-supporting congregations or parishes a reason¬ 
able distance apart and working in harmony under 
the same general head could do the necessary work 
and do it better. Besides, the demand for an effi¬ 
cient ministry, now so much greater than the 
supply, could be more readily met, and there 
would be many more available for the wider field. 

Another important consideration which must 
not be forgotten demanding the retention of the 
historic episcopate is the outlook toward unity, 
however as yet far off, with the Roman and Eastern 
branches of Christendom. No conception of unity 
would ever be considered by either of them that 
proposed to give up the episcopacy, for that idea 
of ecclesiastical polity is vital to their religion. 
Therefore to give up episcopacy for the sake of 
uniting with the Protestant denominations would 
be suicidal. Open the door as widely as possible 
toward the non-episcopal churches, but do not 
sacrifice that fundamental element of the bond of 


104 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


unity that would make unity with the universal 
Church impossible for all time. 

Because human nature is what it is, it needs 
the Church for its reconstruction and perfecting. 
For the Church, notwithstanding the ills and abuses 
it has suffered from misguided and false leaders on 
the one hand, and sectarianism on the other, has 
been in all ages the greatest civic and moral force 
the world has ever known. It has stood, on the 
whole, for every virtue and every form of good. 
It has been a decided protest against immorality 
and all unrighteousness. It has always contained 
a sufficient number of souls who never bowed the 
knee to Baal to save it from the peril of utter failure 
in accomplishing its great mission. The gates of 
hell have not prevailed against it. 


CHAPTER IX 


The Word of the Father— 

The Holy Scriptures 

That some definite knowledge of the content 
of the Holy Scriptures, or the Bible, is essential to 
the Christian life and hope goes without the saying. 
Christianity and the Bible are so inter-related that 
they cannot be thought of as separate and distinct 
entities. The Bible is the Church’s depository of 
truth, the Christian’s text book, his chart and com¬ 
pass. It is to him the record of the living word; in 
its truth he lives, and apart from it he dies; he 
loses his hold on life. When one begins to deny or 
doubt the inspiration and divine authority of the 
Christian Scriptures one begins to drift hopelessly 
from one’s moorings and soon or late fetches up in 
some form of skepticism, rationalism, or substitute 
for Christianity. He is as one drifting in the open 
sea without rudder, chart or compass. He is with¬ 
out God and without hope in the world. 

As Christians we are bound to believe that the 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were 
given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God. 
What an early writer said of the Old Testament we 
believe may be said even more emphatically of the 
New: “No prophesy ever came by the will of man. 


106 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy 
Ghost.” Of all the books ever written there is none 
which contains so much self-evidence of its divine 
origin and character as the Bible. There is no other 
book, except as based on the comprehensive teach¬ 
ing of the Bible that gives a tithe of what it con¬ 
tains as to what one needs to know for one’s spirit¬ 
ual health and growth. 

We believe the Bible contains a complete revela¬ 
tion of the mind and will of God toward mankind. 
It touches human life at every important point; 
provides for its every weakness and need; shows 
us how to live, how to rise to high ideals, and gives 
us, as the living word, the inspiration to rise and to 
attain. Taken in its completeness the Bible is the 
only book that fully satisfies man’s conception of 
the truth; and that is what his soul demands. 
As an old writer once said, “The truth is for man 
and man is for the truth.” Human nature demands 
the truth for its satisfaction and well-being. It is 
incomplete and restless without it. Without the 
truth man cannot understand himself—cannot 
have peace within—cannot rise in the scale of true 
manhood. Whoever thinks to live a life that is 
worthwhile without the truth is self-deceived; he 
is gambling on counterfeit values. So profoundly 
does man’s moral nature demand the truth that it 


THE WORD OF THE FATHER 


107 


cannot rest until it finds it—till it is discovered by 
him. If he fail to find it he runs to some supersti¬ 
tion, fiction or semblance of the truth to satisfy his 
longings. 

But while man has inherently a conception of 
the truth, that is, a capacity to recognize and re¬ 
ceive it when it is revealed to him, he does not in 
and of himself possess it. He has a place for it, a 
longing after it, a hunger for it and a mind to dis¬ 
cern it; but not sufficient depth of vision to per¬ 
ceive it till it is revealed to him. His own mind 
unaided cannot penetrate its hidden depths. Here 
is where the written word comes to his relief and 
rescue. It discloses that form of the truth which 
human nature demands to satisfy its spiritual 
hunger. It discovers to man his true condition and 
destiny, gives him a better knowledge of himself, 
enlightens his mind and understanding on every 
point relative to his duty as a moral and responsible 
being, unfolds to him the means of rising above his 
material limitations and of reaching the highest 
level of moral excellence. It reveals to him, first 
of all, the unwelcome truth that he is a sinful being, 
guilty in the sight of God, spiritually helpless, and 
in peril of death eternal as a consequence. But no 
sooner has it brought him to this consciousness of 
his undone condition than it begins to reveal to 


108 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


him the other and more welcome phase of the truth, 
which is that there is provided for him a way of 
relief and deliverance in the person and interven¬ 
tion of a divine Redeemer and Saviour. Thus, 
while the truth probes deeply the wound made by 
sin, it carries healing in its surgery. It does not 
leave the patient helpless and in despair, but leaves 
in him a well-grounded hope. “ There is a tradition 
of the veiled image of Sais, that whosoever lifted 
the veil must die”; and the death was hopeless. 
Not so with those who lift the veil of truth. They 
must indeed be prepared to die, that is to sin and 
self-will, but not to the world of reality, for the 
death which they die is swallowed up of life. 

Now as the whole content of divine truth for 
mankind is contained in the Holy Scriptures they 
are the source of information to consult by those 
who would find and know the truth. There is no 
other trustworthy resort. No man may attain to 
a knowledge of the truth and deny, or ignore these 
sacred writings. They were “written for our learn¬ 
ing, that we through patience and comfort of the 
Scriptures might have hope.” They are ours to 
“hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest”. 
This is essential to every true Christian life. 
Though the essential doctrines of our religion are 
quite within the compass of the ordinary mind, 


THE WORD OF THE FATHER 


109 


they do not lie so near the surface that they may be 
apprehended without earnest and prayerful study. 
They are too profound and full of meaning for 
careless hearers or casual readers. Nothing in any 
line is of permanent worth that costs no price, 
much less that of greatest value. 

The necessity of study and research is also mani¬ 
fest because the Bible does not, like a treatise, 
take up the different phases of divine truth cate¬ 
gorically, or in any regular order of sequence. In 
fact, it is not one book, but many. It was written 
by a large number of writers and editors each, for 
the most part, working independently one of the 
other, covering a wide range of subjects and appear¬ 
ing at widely separate periods of history and varied 
stages of mental and moral development. Thus 
the Bible is what should be thought of as a sacred 
library, rather than a single book or volume, exhib¬ 
iting many varieties of religious literature and 
learning. 

Then, again, much of the Bible was written in 
a primitive age. It was all written before any im¬ 
portant discoveries were made in the natural 
sciences, such as we know today. The writers knew 
practically nothing of geology, astronomy, biology 
or contemporary history. They wrote not only in 
an unscientific and unhistorical age, but in an age 


110 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


of myth and legend, and an age, too, when the most 
crude ideas were entertained of the sacredness and 
value of human life; and though they were well- 
meaning and God-fearing men, they could not but 
be more or less influenced by these conditions when 
they were writing. They were not and did not 
claim to be amanuences of the Holy Spirit, taking 
down, word for word, the divine dictations, like a 
modern stenographer; but were men enjoying 
perfect freedom of thought, judgment, individuality 
and choice of method, desirous only of giving their 
people and race the benefit of their inspirations 
and discoveries. They were earnest seekers after 
God, with an ear to His word and will, and what 
they heard and felt they recorded to the best of their 
ability and understanding. That they never mis¬ 
understood the mind of the Spirit, that they erred 
in some details and judgments, that they were more 
or less influenced by the crudities of the times in 
which they lived, that they gave utterance at times 
to sentiments and feelings which a more advanced 
and enlightened age was bound to outgrow, there 
is indubitable evidence. It could not well be other¬ 
wise under the circumstances. But that they stood 
uncompromisingly for truth, purity, sobriety and 
righteousness, for justice, equity and charity, is 
everywhere manifest. Whatever their faults and 


THE WORD OF THE FATHER 


111 


race-prejudices, they were rigidly fair-minded and 
honest. They never intentionally withheld the 
truth, no matter where it hit, nor bore false-witness, 
no matter how severely it reflected on themselves 
or others, enemy or friend. Thus the faults and 
sins of some of their great heroes, as Noah, Abra¬ 
ham, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon and others, 
were not spared, and no apology or excuse was 
ever made for any of them for going wrong, no 
matter how much it might have seemed to their 
advantage as a people to cover up the facts. The 
same holds good in both Testaments; all of which 
goes to show that the writers were truly inspired 
by the Spirit of God, making their testimony and 
declarations profitable indeed for correction, for 
teaching, for reproof, for instruction which is in 
righteousness. 

But while the acceptance of the Bible as a 
whole, or as in substance, the word of God, is a 
fundamental doctrine of the Christian Church, for 
reasons already given it is not essential that one 
reckon all parts of it as equally inspired and author¬ 
itative. The writers evidently enjoyed different 
degrees of inspiration, being more or less influenced 
by the times in which they lived and the greater 
or less uncertainty of their sources of information. 
We are not bound to take their word in every minor 


112 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


particular, nor their ideas of right and wrong in 
every instance. To claim such infallibility is more 
than the facts will bear out or justify. Our Lord 
Himself, much as He loved the Old Testament 
which was the only Bible in his day, did not hesi¬ 
tate to criticise and qualify and in some cases even 
reject some of the primitive ideas and judgments 
of priests and lawgivers, particularly with reference 
to their rulings on retaliations, marriage and di¬ 
vorce, and the proper observance of the Sabbath 
day. The Levitical law forbade every kind of 
work on the Sabbath day, even to the gathering of 
a few sticks of wood to make a fire to cook a meal 
for one’s family, under penalty of death. But Jesus 
taught that “the Sabbath was made for man and 
not man for the Sabbath;” and at the same time 
He justified His disciples in plucking ears of corn 
on the Sabbath to appease their hunger. Yet on 
the whole Jesus held the Old Testament in highest 
esteem and reverence, quoting it confidently and 
freely to prove the truth of His doctrines and to 
repel the appeals and sophistries of the evil spirit. 
He held it in no less high regard because it was so 
truly human, and all the more because its defects 
and limitations were so few and inconsequential. 

But some may say, as many indeed have said, 
Does not the concession that there are mistakes in 


THE WORD OF THE FATHER 


113 


the Bible, that not all the statements will bear 
close scrutiny, discredit it as a whole? If it err in 
any detail or particular how are we to know that 
it is trustworthy in anything? If it is in substance 
the word of God how can it contain anything con¬ 
trary to fact or reason? It must be confessed that 
these questions are more easily asked than an¬ 
swered. On their face they seem to admit of but 
one answer, and that is the Bible must be inerrant 
in every thought and word, or it is no more inspired 
or authoritative than any other good book or 
writing. But there are a number of arguments to 
the contrary which must be taken into considera¬ 
tion. In the first place, the Scriptures make no 
claim that they are inerrant in every point and 
detail. Neither lawgiver, poet or prophet positively 
asserts his infallibility. They were all men of 
strongest convictions, honest and earnest servants 
of God and obviously moved by the Spirit of God 
to write. But they were conscious of their own 
limitations in their efforts to convey the messages 
which came to them from God. Then, again, the 
fact that the Lord Himself did not hesitate to 
challenge some of their sayings and judgments 
makes it not only tenable and safe to disclaim 
infallibility for the inspired penmen, but the only 
honest and reasonable position to maintain. 


114 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


One of the poorest friends of the sacred writings 
though he does not know it, is the literalist—the 
man who stands obstinately for verbal inspiration. 
He is himself blinded by the letter and he makes 
blind all his credulous followers. It is a case of the 
blind leading the blind. It is the man who is 
capable of looking deeper than the letter and is 
able to discern the truth who is its truest friend. 
The Scribes and Pharisees were the literalists of 
Christs’ day, and we all know how they stood out 
against the truth. To them the letter of the law 
and the prophets was everything and the spirit of 
their teachings was little or nothing. They were 
so blinded by the letter of their Scriptures and 
traditions that when their long-looked for Messiah 
appeared they stubbornly rejected and persecuted 
Him. They turned deaf ears to his teachings, mis¬ 
represented Him and caused Him to be put cruelly 
to death. They would have none of Him. He did 
not fit into their narrow groove. 

The same spirit has always obtained among 
slaves to the letter. It was true of the Montanists 
of the second century, and the earlier Lutherans 
and other reformers embodied it in some of their 
symbols. There is nothing more blinding than this 
form of slavery, and it is a blindness that is far- 
reaching and most blighting in its effects. It makes 


THE WORD OF THE FATHER 


115 


men narrow-minded and uncharitable, bigoted 
and intolerant in their spirit. It is the fertile soil 
of contention and persecution. It finds heretics 
among the most saintly men and women and relent¬ 
lessly consigns them to perdition. It has done more 
to stimulate and foster the unhappy divisions of 
Christendom than any other factor or influence. 

The best friends of the Bible, those most bene¬ 
fited by its contents, are those who read it with 
open and discerning minds, and not to be discour¬ 
aged or dismayed by the discovery of some things 
in it not literally accurate or in perfect accord with 
facts and judgments known and approved in a 
later and more enlightened age. They are able 
to grasp its deeper meaning and to discern its most 
helpful truths and sentiments, and are not per¬ 
turbed by what does not appeal to them as strictly 
true and important. Thus when they read the 
record of cruelties and severities attributed by the 
writers direct to Jehovah which would do credit 
to a savage race or an inhuman autocrat or despot 
they do not feel bound to accept the statement as 
authoritative; or when they read the imprecatory 
psalms which call upon God to pour down ven¬ 
geance without mercy on His and their enemies 
from the least to the greatest, they do not feel 
themselves obliged to join with the suppliants in 


116 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


their feelings of hatred and retaliation. They 
understand with Paul that “we have the treasures 
of Holy writ in earthen vessels”, and that they 
must be received and read as such. It is such dis¬ 
cerning students of the Word who get most light 
and help and comfort out of it. While no slaves 
to the letter, they are persuaded that the Bible is 
so replete with divine wisdom and truth it will bear 
the most careful and searching examination—that 
when the so-called higher criticism has gone its 
length, it will stand the test and shine all the 
brighter, proving that it came truly from God, has 
his stamp on its every page, and as such may be 
banked upon by every soul in quest of knowledge 
which will make him wise unto salvation. More 
and more he will find in both the Old and New 
Testaments what St. Paul declared of the Old, 
that “they were written for our learning, that we 
through patience and comfort of the Scriptures 
might have hope”. 

In concluding this chapter on the Holy Scrip¬ 
tures no words could be more to the point than 
those of Professor Orr in the last paragraph of his 
learned treatise on Revelation and Inspiration: 
In the last resort, the proof of the inspiration of 
the Bible—not, indeed, in every particular, but 
in the essential message—is to be found in the life- 




THE WORD OF THE FATHER 


117 


giving effects which that message has produced 
wherever its word of truth has gone forth. This 
is the truth for the argument for inspiration based 
on the witness of the Holy Spirit. The Bible has 
the qualities claimed for it as an inspired book. 
Those qualities, on the other hand, nothing but 
inspiration could impart. It leads to God and 
Christ; it gives light on the deepest problems of 
life, death and eternity; it discovers the way of 
deliverance from sin; it makes men new creatures; 
it furnishes the man of God completely for every 
good work. That it possesses these qualities his¬ 
tory and experience through all the centuries have 
attested; its saving, sanctifying and civilizing 
effects among all the races of men in all the world 
attest it still. The Word of God is a pure word; a 
word never found wanting by those who rest them¬ 
selves upon it. The Bible that embraces this word 
will retain its distinction as the Book of Inspiration 
till the end of time.” 


CHAPTER X 


Communion with the Father—Prayer 

We come now to consider one of the great 
essentials of our religion which probably presents 
greater difficulties to the average mind than any 
other in our reckoning. All Christians, not to 
speak of the adherents of other religions, believe 
in communion with God, or prayer, whether or not 
they practice it in form or fact. But to give a logi¬ 
cal reason for their belief in it would puzzle most 
of them not a little. The difficulty they find ob¬ 
tains chiefly in the desire to reconcile the call to 
prayer with the belief that God is all-powerful and 
wise and good and knows all our needs before we 
ask Him. Why should we be required or expected 
to entreat Him to do for us what we are taught He 
is so able and willing to do, and can have no motive 
for refusing us? 

Then, again, why should we expect God to 
change his plans or purposes towards us for our 
asking under any circumstances which might 
arise when all his plans and purposes must have 
been the best from the beginning? Are not His 
laws so just and good that to make any change in 
them at our request would be inconsistent and 


COMMUNION WITH THE FATHER 


119 


subversive of the best interests of His eternal 
Kingdom? 

It must be confessed that these questions as to 
the reasonableness and utility of prayer are formid¬ 
able, to say the least, and it is no wonder that many 
have stumbled over them and been sorely tempted 
to abandon it as a means of grace. Yet we main¬ 
tain that the questions are not unanswerable, 
though the answers may not be easy to give, and 
will not satisfy every skeptical mind, particularly 
those who do not love to pray. 

I'n the first place, we must bear in mind that 
any attempt to vindicate the reasonableness and 
worth of prayer must consist with the idea of the 
unchangeableness of God’s laws and purposes. In 
other words, our prayers must never assume that 
God will break or disregard any of His laws for our 
asking; for, as we have seen, His laws are neces¬ 
sarily perfect, coming, as they do, from the most 
perfect Source in the universe. What then is the 
solution of the problem? How may prayer be 
successfully defended and justified? 

In the opinion of the writer no better answer 
has ever been given than that of H. E. Fosdick in 
his little book of devotions, entitled, “The Mean¬ 
ing of Prayer.” He says, “You can open the way 
to God to do what He wants to do. Prayer cannot 


120 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


change God’s purposes, but prayer can release it. 
God cannot do for the man with the closed heart 
what He can do for the man with the open heart. 
You can give God a chance to work His will in and 
for and through you. Prayer is simply giving the 
wise and good God an opportunity to do what His 
wisdom and love want done.” (P. 65.) To be sure 
this solution of the problem will not convince the 
determinist nor any of those skeptics who have 
fully decided in their own minds that no law of 
God or of nature can be directed or deflected in any 
channel or in any way whatever varying an iota 
from its original bent or trend. But these declaim- 
ers against the utility of prayer will be found invari¬ 
ably to be unbelievers in God as a Person, or as in 
any sense personal. Their God, if they may be 
said to have any, is not a being capable of sym¬ 
pathizing with His creatures, or having their 
highest good eternally in mind; but one who is 
Himself immutable law and utterly impassive in 
His nature. Of course such a Deity could not hear 
or answer prayer. But if God be a Person in the 
sense that He is a Being who thinks and feels and 
exercises will-power like any other intelligent and 
rational being, as for example man, only on an 
immeasurably larger scale, then it cannot be un¬ 
reasonable that He should be moved with com- 


COMMUNION WITH THE FATHER 


121 


passion and gladly listen to the cries of His chil¬ 
dren, and so to direct and unfold His holy and 
benevolent purposes for their highest good. He 
waits to be gracious—longs for the opportunity to 
respond to every heart-opening. So it all depends 
on what one’s conception of God is as to whether 
one can believe in prayer. An impersonal deity is 
one thing and a personal God is quite another. 
One might as well call on a stone for sympathy or 
help as to call upon the former, but the other is a 
heart of flesh and not of stone. He is full of com¬ 
passion. 

We do not, however, have to prove the reason¬ 
ableness of prayer to be persuaded of the utility 
and value of it. As Christians we have a more sure 
word of defense and confirmation. We have both 
the admonition and the example of our Lord. He 
both made constant use of this means of grace and 
helpfulness in His ministry and taught it diligently 
to His disciples. It would seem that if any one ever 
lived who needed not to resort to prayer to obtain 
the help of God it was Jesus Christ; for He lived 
every hour of His short and eventful life close to the 
heart of His Father so that every want of His soul 
must have been at His command. Yet according 
to the Evangelists no man ever spent more of his 
quiet hours in communion with God than the Son of 


122 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


man. It is said that the entire night was sometimes 
spent in this attitude, particularly when in antici¬ 
pation of some great function, event or experience. 
And such praying! Did He doubt for a moment 
that His Father heard Him? It was His only source 
of companionship and assurance in these exigencies. 
There was no other to whom He could go because 
no other as yet understood His great mission in the 
world. Even His chosen apostles could not watch 
with Him a single hour during His agony in the 
garden, or His trial before Pilate. 

That Jesus diligently taught His disciples to 
pray there is abundant evidence. He exhorted 
them to pray against the danger of being led into 
temptation; to pray to their Heavenly Father in 
secret; to ask that they might receive; to pray to 
God to send more laborers into his harvest; to pray 
even for their enemies, those who despitefully used 
them and persecuted them. He told them always 
to pray and not to faint; in a word He told them 
to lay all their wants and worries before their 
Heavenly Father and never doubt that He would 
hear and care for them. Withal He gave them a 
simple but all inclusive form of prayer as a sample 
of the kind of praying most pleasing to God and 
that could not fail of obtaining a favorable answer. 
It was a prayer, too, in keeping with the idea that 
they would not be heard for their much speaking. 


COMMUNION WITH THE FATHER 


123 


Up to that time the disciples had not given 
much time or thought to offering prayer directly 
to God. They often came to Jesus with their wants, 
beseeching Him to do for them because they had 
learned that He was most compassionate and re¬ 
sponsive. But they had no idea that God was like 
Him in that respect. The scribes and Pharisees 
had given them a very different idea of God from 
that. But after the departure of Jesus they recalled 
His words, and then, like Him, they went with all 
confidence to the Father. They had learned to see 
God in the face of Jesus Christ. So much store 
did they set on the utility and power of prayer that 
they met daily for that unfailing source of spiritual 
strength and helpfulness; and the apostles, in 
particular, in order to find more time for com¬ 
munion with God together with the preaching of the 
word, were moved to call for and solemly set apart 
an order of deacons to relieve them in some measure 
of the growing charitable work among the widows 
and orphans which was consuming so much of their 
time and strength as to interfere with their wider 
calling and commission. It was not that they had 
lost any of their concern for these worthy objects 
of charity, but that they might improve the widen¬ 
ing opportunities for spreading the knowledge of 
Christ and His Kingdom to a larger clientile. They 


124 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


had, in fact, an outlook toward an universal altru¬ 
ism, that is, the saving of all mankind from the sins 
of selfishness and religious indifference. 

In this wider field of evangelism it is noticeable 
that the apostles set prayer on an equal footing with 
the preaching of the word. They obviously felt 
that the spread of the Gospel could not be effectu¬ 
ally done without their keeping very close to the 
ear of God. “We will continue steadfastly in 
prayer and in the preaching of the word.” (Acts 
6:4.) Thus the original disciples of Christ, the 
founders under Him of the Church, believed tho¬ 
roughly in prayer. It was cardinal in their religion 
and life. The best evidence that they believed in 
it is that they prayed. Prayer was of their very 
being—their vital breath. It was their continuous 
and unfailing resort. They lived in the atmosphere 
of prayer. And what trials and persecutions it 
carried them through! Prison doors swung open 
of their own accord, and no power on earth could 
stop their mouths, or hinder them from bearing 
witness to the truth. 

But why pursue further the arguments for the 
utility and efficacy of prayer? It is a matter of 
experience rather than argument. The great proof 
of the worth of prayer is praying. Only those who 
pray are likely to be persuaded of its utility. The 


COMMUNION WITH THE FATHER 


125 


prayerless souls will always be skeptical. The less 
men pray the less faith they have in it. We know 
that the faithful in Christ in all ages were instant 
in prayer in season and out of season. It was their 
unfailing resort in times of discouragement and 
persecution, and it sustained every martyr for the 
faith. All the great mystics, reformers and mis¬ 
sionaries have ever been men and women of prayer. 
The harder they worked and the greater their suc¬ 
cess the more they prayed. 

The same is ever true. Prayer is as much in 
evidence today among earnest Christian workers 
as in any previous age or period. Missionaries, 
Christian educators and social service workers 
have their regular hours of prayer and meditation, 
finding in them a geniune source of helpfulness and 
consolation. They do not indeed expect miracles 
in the way of answers, but they do expect and do 
obtain substantial encouragement and support in 
their efforts to extend the principles of the Kingdom 
of God and his righteousness among mankind. 
They would not have the courage or heart to work 
in this capacity without this source of spiritual 
strength and helpfulness. 

Something should be said in this connection to 
correct wrong impressions concerning prayer which 
have tended to discredit it with not a few critics 


126 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


and questioners. Many have the notion that 
prayer is a pious way of begging. They think of it 
chiefly as obtaining material and tangible benefits 
and blessings straight from God for the mere ask¬ 
ing, without any exertion or co-operation on their 
part. There could be no greater mistake. True 
prayer is not begging. The devout soul is never a 
beggar. When one prays one does not ask God to 
do for him what he has no mind to do for himself; 
he asks for the opportunity to earn or to come hon¬ 
estly by the things that he feels he needs. He is a 
humble suppliant, but not a beggar. 

Nowhere is the rule that what one would obtain 
one must work for more in force than in the reli¬ 
gion of Jesus Christ; for that religion is in perfect 
keeping with the laws of life. Unless one works, 
or is willing to work, one cannot pray, for he is 
not in the spirit of prayer. To get in the spirit of 
prayer one must get into the harness for work. Prayer 
and a mind to work go hand in hand. So Nehemiah 
found it when he was rebuilding the walls of Jeru¬ 
salem. And those who pray best and most are not 
always those who spend most time on their knees, 
though that is a very natural and proper attitude 
for prayer. The praying souls are those who live 
constantly in the atmosphere of God, even as little 
children live almost unconsciously in the security 


COMMUNION WITH THE FATHER 


127 


of their parents’ nearness and protection. The 
truth is men are always praying when they are 
striving earnestly in the fear of God to obtain the 
things needful for body and soul. They are workers 
together with God. As has been forcibly said, 
4 ‘Men do not get their food by an invocation of 
divine Providence; they get it by digging and 
planting and reaping and grinding and baking.” 
They do not tempt God by saying that the world 
owes them a living and why should they be ex¬ 
pected to work for it? 

The fact is that one who prays for benefits or 
favors which one has no mind to work for prays 
to an impossible Deity. There is no such God in 
the universe. The true God loves his moral crea¬ 
tures too well to do for them what He has endued 
them with power and skill to do for themselves. 
He is so near us that He does for us chiefly by work¬ 
ing with and in us. 

The whole world is, under God, organized to 
respond to the appeal and power of prayer. As 
some one has said, “The chemistry of the universe 
is at the disposal of the men and women who pray 
in spirit; and all the forces of nature come to their 
aid and help to answer their prayers.” But the 
world must be given a square deal. We must work 
and pray in harmony with its just and beneficent 


128 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


laws. We must not expect the laws of God or of 
nature to conform to our selfish desires and pur¬ 
poses. We cannot have too much faith in the power 
and will of God to answer prayer provided we are 
always ready to employ the means and remedies 
He has put within our reach to help towards their 
answer. This principle applies to the sick as well 
as to the healthy. Prayer for the sick is always 
proper and helpful; the wise physician always 
welcomes it. But to expect the sick to get well 
without proper nursing and the wise and faithful 
use of nature’s remedies is both impious and pre¬ 
sumptuous. It defies both God and true science. 

Above all we must never forget that the bless¬ 
ing God longs most to give us is his Holy Spirit— 
the Spirit of His Son who rendered perfect obedi¬ 
ence to His will and was so thoroughly unselfish 
and pure and good that no good thing could be 
withheld from Him. In comparing the different 
gospels on this point we find that the gift of the 
Holy Spirit and God’s gifts to His children mean 
one and the same thing. (Matt. 6:11, Luk. 11:13.) 
The truth would seem to be that no prayer for 
either temporal or spiritual blessings is acceptable 
to God that is not offered ‘fin the Holy Spirit,” or 
the Spirit of Christ. There can be no good things 
for those who care not for the Spirit of God. 


COMMUNION WITH THE FATHER 


129 


Thus far we have been considering prayer in 
the light of petition, or supplication, that is, mak¬ 
ing known our wants to God. But we must bear 
in mind that though this is an important factor of 
prayer, it is by no means the sum of it. Prayer, in 
its wider meaning, embraces not only petition, but 
also intercession, confession, consecration, aspira¬ 
tion, adoration, thanksgiving and praise. Prayer 
is the synthesis of whatever has to do, either direct¬ 
ly or indirectly, with the worship of God. For 
what is prayer but communion with God? Whether 
the worshipper gives most thought to petition, 
confession of sin, intercession, meditation or thanks¬ 
giving, God is the one great center of his devotions. 
It is the act of holding converse or communion with 
God. It is holding such communion or fellowship 
with the Father as need not be expressed in the 
form of words; for we are told that we are not 
heard for our much speaking. To pray acceptably 
one must be a good listener, always ready to hear 
what God has to say. The most devout and earnest 
man is one who has always an ear open to hear the 
still voice that spoke to Elijah in Horeb. As has 
been said, “One of the strongest misconceptions of 
prayer is that it consists chiefly of talking to God, 
whereas the best part of prayer is our listening to 
God.” The boy Samuel learned this when God 


130 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


spoke to him in the silent hours of the night.“ Speak 
Lord, for thy servant heareth.” A psalmist learned 
the same important lesson in his day: “I will hear 
what the Lord will say unto me, for He will speak 
peace unto His people and unto his saints.” It is 
not improbable that the long hours of the night 
which our Lord spent in prayer during his ministry 
were occupied mainly in listening to His Father’s 
words of counsel and encouragement. When one 
comes to this fuller conception of prayer, as that of 
communion with God, one will not be greatly dis¬ 
appointed if one does not obtain the answer one 
looked for or particularly desired. He will come to 
realize more and more that the God to whom he 
prays knows best what is good for him and he will 
feel that after all his prayer has been answered, 
and in a really better way than he desired. One 
half of the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer is, 
“ Thy will be done.” God’s will is always good will, 
no matter whether it seems to work out to our 
advantage or not; so it is always safe to make it 
impliedly, at least, in all our devotions. God has 
His own way of answering prayer, and we may be 
perfectly sure that it is the best way. Sometimes 
it seems far afield and is very disheartening. We 
feel that He is very severe in His judgments and 
that He can have no patience with us, and many 


COMMUNION WITH THE FATHER 


131 


times we make up our minds that He cannot or 
will not answer. But He knows best, and in the 
long run we will find that He has by no means 
ignored our petitions and heart-longings. Often 
the answers come in apparent refusals, but in the 
end it will be found that what He has to bestow is 
far better than we had in mind in asking. An 
anonymous writer has put this great truth in strik¬ 
ing epigram: 

“He asked for strength that he might achieve; 

He was made weak that he might obey. 

He asked for health that he might do greater 
things; 

He was given infirmity that he might do bet¬ 
ter things. 

He asked for riches that he might be happy; 

He was given poverty that he might be wise. 

He asked for power that he might have the 
praise of men; 

He was given weakness that he might feel the 
need of God. 

He asked for all things that he might enjoy 
life; 

He was given life that he might enjoy all 
things. 

He has received nothing he asked for, all that 
he hoped for. 

His prayer is answered, he is most blest.” 


CHAPTER XI 


The Sacraments of the Gospel 

The English and the American Church Cate¬ 
chisms declare that the Sacraments of Baptism 
and the Supper of the Lord are generally (meaning 
universally) necessary to salvation. This is cer¬ 
tainly a very strong affirmation. In what sense, if 
any, can it be reckoned as true? Can it be true in 
the sense that the salvation of God is restricted to 
those who have been fortunate enough to have 
received Baptism with or in water according to the 
Scriptural formula, and who with some degree of 
regularity partake of the Holy Communion? It all 
depends on what meaning we attach to the word 
'‘salvation”. If we mean by it life after death, or 
life eternal, then it must be said that the assertion 
of the Catechism cannot be true or justified; for we 
cannot reasonably doubt that many have been and 
will be finally saved who never received either of 
the Sacraments of the Gospel. There were godly 
men and women in the world in great numbers be¬ 
fore Christ came, and also since, who never so much 
as heard his name, who certainly could not have 
conformed to such a condition of salvation. There 
were mystics among the adherents of other religions 


THE SACRAMENTS OF THE GOSPEL 


133 


and are today, living in closest fellowship with God 
quite independently of the Sacraments of the Gos¬ 
pel. There were some devout but mistaken souls 
in the early Church who died suddenly without 
receiving Baptism, having postponed it through 
fear that if they should happen to sin after baptism 
they would be hopelessly lost. Then there is a long 
list of Godly men and women such as the Quakers 
in modern times, persons of most exemplary 
Christian spirit, fully persuaded in their own minds 
that spiritual baptism and spiritual communion 
alone are all that is necessary, and do not depend 
on the outward and visible signs. Shall these be 
condemned as unworthy of eternal life? We may 
regard them as mistaken, and rightly; but we have 
no right to judge them as hopelessly lost. 

In what sense then can these Sacraments be 
necessary to salvation? Certainly not in the same 
sense that faith in God and in the Gospel is neces¬ 
sary; nor in the sense that common honesty, or 
purity of life, or charity towards all men, is nec¬ 
essary; for these are inseparable from the Chris¬ 
tian life. They are of the very substance of Godli¬ 
ness. They are in and of themselves salvation. 
Whosoever is in possession of these virtues is saved 
already. They are not to be reckoned as means of 
grace; they are the great objective. Apart from 
them there is no such thing as salvation. 


134 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


Not so with the Sacraments. They are not in 
themselves salvation, nor their formal observance. 
The Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, 
even though it be the sacrament of Christ’s Body 
and Blood. “ The Kingdom of God is righteousness 
and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” The sacra¬ 
ments of the Gospel are appointed means of grace 
which, if humbly and penitently received by the 
faithful, are powerful agencies in bringing and keep¬ 
ing them in fellowship with God and the brethren. 
Why this is true it may not be easy to explain. 
But this much may be said, that as long as we live 
in these material frames we must depend very 
much on outward signs and forms to bind us 
together and to keep us in fellowship with God. 
Flesh and spirit are so closely intertwined and 
related that we cannot draw the line between them. 
We cannot treat body and soul as distinct and 
separate entities. Whether or not the soul is or 
ever will be able to function without some kind of 
a body we do not know; but we do know that it is 
not wont to do so now. We very naturally associ¬ 
ate our thinking activities with the head or brain, 
our feelings and emotions with the heart, and our 
strength with bone and muscle. They seem to be 
vital parts of our very being—apparently insepar¬ 
able therefrom. This is not to say that thought, 


THE SACRAMENTS OF THE GOSPEL 


135 


emotion and strength are products of brain, heart 
and muscle respectively; for we believe, with 
William James, that these vital organs function as 
transmitters of thought, feeling and strength; not 
as producers. In this light all life may be said to be 
sacramental. Whether we eat or drink, work or 
play, it is the mind, the soul, that is most deeply 
concerned, though dependent on the body as the 
outward and visible expression of the reality. 

Recognizing this fact in human nature our Lord 
wisely and lovingly provided for it in laying the 
foundation of His Church and Kingdom. He 
chose and appointed the most common and useful 
elements and products of nature, elements made 
sacred by their deep and far-reaching associations 
in the old order, to signify the essentials of His 
Kingdom, fit symbols of purity, spiritual strength 
and fellowship. What more simple and significant 
substance than water could have been chosen to 
represent separation from the world, the flesh and 
the devil; and what more fitting product of nature 
than bread and the fruit of the vine to set forth 
spiritual nourishment and sacred fellowship! The 
very simplicity and commonness of the elements 
appointed, elements so universally obtainable in 
every age and zone, and so ready at hand, were 
greatly in their favor; for they would suggest and 


136 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


convey the truth that the salvation of God is not 
something to be purchased with a great price by the 
recipient, but the free gift of God on the simple 
and reasonable conditions of repentance and faith. 
Do they not appeal to us in strongest terms? Do 
they not find a ready and glad response in our bet¬ 
ter natures? No wonder the historic Church has 
always held these sacraments of the Gospel in 
highest esteem and reverence. With all the abuses 
they have suffered at the hands of misguided and 
erring men, much as they have been misunderstood 
and distorted and made to stand for something they 
were never intended to represent, still they have 
proved themselves indispensable to the Church’s 
growth and perpetuity; and it is evident that 
Christianity would never have become the great 
power for good it is today, if indeed it would be in 
evidence at all, had it not been for the agency and 
influence of these sacraments. While the unhappy 
and often bitter controversies over their meaning 
and efficacy have discredited them in the minds of 
many, these very contentions have served to keep 
attention upon them and thereby stimulated 
thoughtfulness and a higher appreciation of their 
importance and helpfulness. 

May it not be in this sense more than in any 
other that the affirmation of the Catechism is true 


THE SACRAMENTS OF THE GOSPEL 


137 


with reference to these sacraments? It means that 
they are necessary to the very existence and per¬ 
petuity of the organized Body of Christ in the 
world. Without them there would be no Kingdom 
of God in its larger meaning. There would be here 
and there a thoughtful and devout soul great 
enough to not have to depend on outward signs 
and tokens, however sacred and helpful, to keep 
them true to the voice of conscience, like a So¬ 
crates, a Seneca or a Lincoln; but the great mass 
of humanity would live regardless of the claims of 
God and His laws of good will and righteousness. 
It requires the outward signs and tokens made 
sacred by the word of the Lord to hold mankind 
in leash. Not that there is any magical dynamic 
in them to bring and hold them in communion and 
fellowship; not that there is any power or virtue 
in them per se to bind and to save; but as tokens 
and pledges under God of submission and fellow¬ 
ship, and as channels of His saving grace and love. 

It is not, however, essential to the validity or 
efficacy of the sacraments of the Gospel that one 
thoroughly understand their meaning and purpose. 
Whether or not one believes in the doctrine of 
baptismal regeneration, or whether one accepts or 
doubts the doctrine of the real objective presence 
of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine of the 


138 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


altar, one may lawfully receive them provided he 
does so reverently, and with some sense of unworth¬ 
iness, in humility and charity and with desire and 
purpose of heart to lead a new life. In other words, 
a worthy motive in their reception is far more im¬ 
portant than a correct understanding. 

As has already been indicated, one thing that 
one may not look for in these sacraments is that 
they will work in one, opus operatum , any change 
for the better in one’s character. They are not self¬ 
operative. All depends on whether one is open- 
minded and open-hearted. To be benefited by 
them one must not only believe in their Divine 
appointment and efficacy, but must also comply 
with certain simple and very important conditions 
of their right reception. Without compliance with 
these conditions, no matter how correct or orthodox 
one’s views of the content of these sacraments, 
nor how scrupulously, or how pious in attitude, 
one receives them, the act will not only not con¬ 
tribute to one’s salvation, but rather to his con¬ 
demnation ; for such reception is but self-deception. 

Over the age-long controversy as to the nature 
of these sacraments, whether the dogma of bap¬ 
tismal regeneration is true, and if true in what 
sense, and whether or not there is a real objective 
presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, it is not 


THE SACRAMENTS OF THE GOSPEL 


139 


the design of this article to attempt to settle. The 
writer is far from thinking himself qualified for 
such a task. While holding both Sacraments in 
great reverence, and believing that the very Christ 
gives Himself mystically in them to the humble and 
contrite, the writer is only anxious to emphasize 
the importance of using them in a right spirit, and 
with the perfect understanding that they can and 
will save no one without one’s hearty co-operation. 
All depends on that, no matter how much they 
may be held in reverence. They are distinctively 
means, or channels, of Divine grace, but they can¬ 
not do their gracious work except in willing and 
responsive souls. They are what rain and sunshine 
are to the soil, or earth. As they betoken an 
abundant harvest only when the husbandman 
diligently prepares and cultivates the soil and sows 
the good seed, so the sacraments must depend for 
their efficacy on our “giving all diligence to make 
our calling and election sure.” 

Of one thing with reference to the Sacrament of 
the Eucharist the author is fully persuaded, and 
that is that the mediaeval dogma of transubstantia- 
tion cannot be true; for as our article of religion 
savs, “It overthrows the nature of a sacrament 
and gives occasion to many superstitions.” If at 
the priest’s utterance of the words of consecration 


140 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


the bread and wine are miraculously changed into 
the substance of the body and blood of Christ, 
then they are no longer sacred signs and pledges 
at all, but the very reality itself. The sacrament 
entirely disappears, and the real sacrifice obtains. 
The Lord’s sufferings and death are as nearly as 
possible repeated at every Eucharist. The same 
may be said of those modifications of this dogma, 
such as consubstantiation, impannation and sub¬ 
pannation, which also imply a material presence of 
the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated 
elements. 

Any theory or dogma that involves or implies 
a miraculous physical change in the elements of 
the Eucharist when consecrated is false and mis¬ 
leading, in the opinion of the writer; for it moves 
to great abuses among the ignorant and supersti¬ 
tious. Millions have been led to pay their devo¬ 
tions to the outward form or sign of the Lord’s 
presence instead of the Lord Himself. They have 
and do carry the Sacrament in procession to be 
gazed upon and worshipped, just as though it were 
the living Christ, and the over-credulous have got¬ 
ten it by fair or by foul means to keep it in their 
possession as a charm, believing it to possess some 
magical or miraculous influence for their protection 
and safety, and withal as a sure token of good luck. 


THE SACRAMENTS OF THE GOSPEL 


141 


It is the prostitution of the sacrament rather than 
its lawful use. It serves to make this great means 
of grace a substitute for virtue and personal worth. 

Another well-meant, but in the opinion of the 
writer, a sadly mistaken theory of the Sacrament 
of the Eucharist held by some in the Church, is 
that one of its offices is to keep God propitious or 
reconciled toward mankind by reminding Him 
continuously or often of the great sacrifice His Son 
made for us on the cross. It is maintained that in 
the celebration of the Eucharist we plead the meri¬ 
torious sacrifice of Christ in order to keep the 
Divine wrath abated and inoperative toward us. 
In other words, we are doing by the frequent cele¬ 
bration of this Sacrament on earth what Jesus, as 
our Intercessor, is supposed to be doing perpetu¬ 
ally in heaven—pleading in our behalf the merits of 
His atoning sacrifice. A well-known priest of the 
Church of England, Vernon Stanley, puts it in 
this way; “Before He (Christ) ascended to exer¬ 
cise His office as our great High Priest, He ordained 
a great mystical service, in which we, on earth, 
may have a real part in what He does above. Jesus 
Christ is now pleading the merits of His life and 
death before the face of the Eternal Father, and 
He has given us the means of doing the same on 
earth. This service” he says, “is the Holy Euchar- 


142 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


ist.” This theory is built on a very doubtful inter¬ 
pretation of the words of our Lord as reported by 
St. Luke and St. Paul: “Do this in remembrance 
of me .... For as often as ye eat this bread and 
drink this cup ye do show the Lord’s death until 
He come.” An effort is made to prove that the 
words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” should be 
rendered, “Offer this as a memorial of me,” and 
that the showing of the Lord’s death, in the second 
passage, is for the purpose of moving the Divine 
compassion toward the penitent instead of declar¬ 
ing the Divine compassion, a very different thing. 
Such an interpretation of these words of Institution 
of the Eucharist is purely gratuitous. It is a per¬ 
version of Christ’s teaching too palpable to re¬ 
quire refutation. The God whom Jesus revealed 
and manifested and whom Paul preached is alto¬ 
gether too great and loving a Father to ever need 
to be reminded of the sacrifice His beloved Son 
made for the sins of the world. As we saw in the 
article on the Atonement, from the beginning God 
was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, 
not imputing to them their trespasses. Can it be 
possible that He now needs to be everlastingly 
reminded of that great sacrifice for sin, a sacrifice 
in which He Himself was so deeply involved, to 
keep his wrath abated? 


THE SACRAMENTS OF THE GOSPEL 


143 


The true meaning of these words of our Lord 
pronounced at the Institution of the Eucharist is 
without doubt that which appears on the surface. 
It was above all to keep the disciples mindful of 
their great indebtedness to God for the gift of His 
Son and thereby bind them in closest possible 
fellowship with their Lord and one another, and 
at the same time to proclaim the love of God to all 
mankind. 

Thus the Holy Eucharist is the Church’s great 
Gospel sermon as well as its highest expression of 
worship. It is the most solemn and impressive pro¬ 
clamation of the sacrifice of the death of Christ for 
the sins of the world. So long as the Holy Supper 
is duly and faithfully celebrated in the Church of 
God the great doctrine of the atonement, or recon¬ 
ciliation, will never be lost sight of or undervalued, 
no matter how widely the preacher may depart 
from the Gospel and dwell on other topics in his 
pulpit utterances. The Eucharist will ever speak 
for itself, for it proclaims by word and manual act 
the veritable Gospel, “the Lord’s death until He 
comes.” It keeps the heart of the Gospel burning 
and shining in the world, whether or not the world 
receives it. Without doubt this is what St. Paul 
understood Christ to mean when he quoted Him 
as saying: “Do this in remembrance of me . . . 


144 THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 

For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this 
cup, ye do show (proclaim, R. V.) the Lord’s death 
until He comes.” 

This is not to say, however, that the Eucharist 
is not an act or an offering to God on the part of 
those engaged in its celebration. On the contrary 
it ought to be regarded as the most solemn form 
of prayer in our worship of God. It brings us into 
closest communion and fellowship with the God 
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ we 
offer both our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice 
to God, not indeed thereby to merit His forgive¬ 
ness and favor; but rather that our hearts may be 
open to Him, making it possible for Him to find a 
way to grant us what His heart longs to. Of all 
times to pray there is none more favorable than at 
a celebration of the Holy Communion. Therein 
Christ, our Mediator and Redeemer, is visualized 
by word and manual act,-^-in a sacred sign or 
sacrament which He Himself ordained; and how ' 
can we fail to pour out our hearts in prayer and 
thanksgiving! When Jesus was teaching His 
disciples how to pray, He told them to ask the 
Father in His name. Now as seen in the chapter on 
Prayer, to pray in the name of Christ is to pray in 
His spirit, or as Jude expresses it, it is “praying in 
the Holy Ghost.” If ever there was a time when 


THE SACRAMENTS OF THE GOSPEL 


145 


one should be more in the spirit of prayer than 
another it is when one is in the act of drawing near 
to God in the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of 
Christ. Then, of all times, are we able to say out 
of the fulness of our hearts, “Through Jesus Christ 
our Lord.” For if we have received the Sacrament 
worthily, that is, discerning the Lord’s Body, then 
we have the pledge and assurance that He dwells 
in us and we in Him. 

Nor should it be forgotten that this Sacrament 
of the Gospel is distinctively an act and office of 
thanksgiving. It is a Eucharist, that is, a Thanks¬ 
giving, even as St. Paul calls it. There is no gospel 
duty urged upon us more explicitly than that of 
being devoutly thankful. Jesus commended but 
one of the ten lepers whom He healed and sent to 
the priest for inspection, and that was the Samari¬ 
tan who alone returned to give thanks to his Healer. 
St. Paul, in all his epistles, never failed to remind 
the disciples of the supreme duty of thanksgiving. 
Why so urgent this duty? Because a thankful soul 
is always open towards God and responsive to His 
will and benediction. 

In the light of these facts and considerations 
and many others which might be named, we cannot 
fail to see in these Sacraments of the Gospel an 
essential condition to completeness of Christian 


146 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


character and salvation. The Church and the 
world would be unspeakably poorer without them, 
if indeed there would be any church in the world 
today. Surely there would be little to attract and 
bind together even spiritually minded men and 
women, to say nothing of the rest of mankind, if 
the Lord had not ordained and left these sacred 
signs and pledges of His love and sacrifice to be 
perpetually observed. 


CHAPTER XII 


Christian Missions 

We have now reached, in the study of the Great 
Essentials of the Religion of Jesus Christ, a subject 
which in point of importance cannot possibly be 
overstated. In fact Missions is just what Chris¬ 
tianity stands for above every other objective in 
the world. It means the wide-spread extension of 
the Kingdom of God among mankind. It is the 
interpretation and realization of the Incarnation. 
It is what God sent His Son into the world to 
initiate and mightily set forward. It was God’s 
great love for the whole world of mankind that 
moved Him to make so great a sacrifice. Not to 
the tribes of Israel only, but to every race and 
tribe, Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” 
The Son of man came into the world to save that 
which was lost. He tasted death for every man. 
When He gave his great commission to His chosen 
He said, “Go into all the world; make disciples of 
all the nations.” (Matt. 28 .) St. Luke says He 
commanded “that repentance and remission of 
sins be preached in His name unto all the nations, 
beginning from Jerusalem.” Could any words be 
more definite, explicit or broader in their meaning? 


148 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


Surely not. Then what is left for us to do but to 
obey? Can there be any higher or more binding 
obligation? 

Christianity is distinctively a missionary reli¬ 
gion. This is its high and holy vocation. It has no 
other. The world is its field. Where there is no 
missionary spirit, there is no Christianity The 
Missionary Spirit is the charter of the Church. 
This is the conviction of every intelligent man who 
is Christian in something more than in name. 
There can be no exception to this rule. People who 
say they do not believe in missions have never 
understood Christianity nor Christ. When they 
once come to know Christ they will gladly re¬ 
spond to the call; they will make the great cause 
of missions first in their reckoning and first in their 
prayers. 

This is not saying that there are not many 
good people who do not believe in missions; there 
are. It is simply to say that they do not know 
Jesus Christ. Did they know Him they would pos¬ 
sess the missionary spirit, for they would possess 
His Spirit. The excuse that many make for not 
believing in missions is that there are too many 
heathen at home. Yes, and there always will be 
as long as so many who profess the Christian faith 
declare their aversion to foreign missions. They 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 


149 


show by that attitude that they have not the spirit 
that appeals to the “heathen at home”. As a mat¬ 
ter of fact the heathen at home do not live far 
beyond the lines of their own parish. 

The reason Christian missions are of supreme 
moment is because Jesus Christ is the great need 
of mankind. There are indeed other great religions 
in the world, and they each and all, perhaps, have 
some points of merit. They teach much that is 
true and good. There is no use in denying that 
fact. On the contrary we are glad to know that it 
is true. But besides teaching much that is false 
and superstitious, their greatest defect is that they 
provide no remedy for the disease of sin and no 
source of power to overcome human weakness. In 
short they offer the soul no Saviour. Buddhism, 
undoubtedly the best of all the ethnic religions, 
with all its merits, betrays this fundamental 
defect. The founder of this great religion, in one 
of his addresses to his followers, said, “Go forth, 
O brethren, and wander over the world for the sake 
of the many, out of compassion for the world, for 
the welfare of the many, for the good and the weal 

and the gain of gods and men.Proclaim the 

teaching lovely in its origin, lovely in its progress, 
and lovely in its consummation, both in its spirit 
and in the letter. Set forth the higher life in all its 


150 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


fulness and all its purity.” Is not this a very noble 
appeal and message? Why should people with such 
high ideals set before them need the Christian 
Gospel? In a very able address some years ago by 
the president of the Young Men’s Buddhist Associa¬ 
tion of Ceylon, defending the purity and adequacy 
of their religion and contrasting it with the Chris¬ 
tian religion, unwittingly answers these questions. 
He says, “The path which opens the eyes and 
bestows understanding, which leads to peace of 
mind, to higher wisdom, to full enlightenment,— 
all has to be accomplished by one’s own efforts. 
Evil must be eschewed, the good must be practiced, 
and the path of emancipation must be trodden 
each by himself. Here no god nor gods can help 
man, no rite nor ceremony, no penance or prayer 
are of any avail. You yourself must make the 
effort. The Buddhist only points the way.” In 
other words, Buddhism lays down inexorable laws 
of conduct and commands men to obey them wholly 
in their own strength, without help or sympathy 
from any Divine Being. As this same apostle of 
Buddhism says further, “Self-help is the keynote 
of its message. In words which peal forth the 
utmost convictions of one who has, unaided, 
fought and won the great battle of self-conquest, 
the master thus exhorts his disciples: “Renounce 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 


151 


evil, my brethren, and practice that which is 
good. ,, And there he leaves the poor helpless soul, 
telling him nothing of the true and living God or 
sympathizing Saviour, or Heavenly Father, be¬ 
cause he knows none. 

Thus we perceive that the very best type of the 
great world religions, if indeed it may be called a 
religion, is fundamentally lacking as a power to 
save man from his worst enemy, sin, and to help 
him in the struggle towards life’s goal. Weakness 
is a universal defect in human nature, and this 
great cult, with all its excellences, offers no remedy 
or redress. The same may be said with even 
greater emphasis of every other ethnic religion. 
They know no God who is able or cares to help 
them. 

Let it be clearly understood that the motive of 
Christian missions is today not what it was with 
most missionary boards a half a century and more 
ago. The paramount motive then was the convic¬ 
tion that unless the heathen peoples heard and 
formally accepted the Christian Gospel they would 
all be hopelessly lost, no matter how high their 
ideals, or how upright their manner of life. No 
missionary society or individual missionary of any 
standing teaches or believes any such sentiment 
today. It is not to be wondered at that the prog- 


152 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


ress of missions was so lagging while that motive 
obtained. It was an insult to the intelligent and 
upright among non-christian peoples, and it did 
not appeal to the more thoughtful and charitably 
minded souls in the Church. It is only since Chris¬ 
tian missionaries began to act from higher and 
more rational motives in giving the Gospel to the 
non-christian peoples that a wide and profound 
interest has been awakened in foreign missions 
among Christians at home. 

Another fact in this connection to be kept in 
mind is that the missionary is not sent out to 
antagonize the religions of the peoples where he 
goes. What he finds among them that is true and 
good he gladly commends and encourages. It is 
his mission to supplement and improve, rather 
than supplant, their teachings and ideals. We are 
sure we have something to offer to the different 
forms and cults among the non-christian peoples 
of exceeding great worth, something they will 
greatly appreciate and gladly appropriate when 
they once come to understand it. They will and 
do perceive that it is just what their religions lack 
to make them effective along all lines of moral and 
spiritual progress and social betterment. As a 
matter of fact many among them have already 
made this discovery, and acted upon it. Unnum- 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 


153 


bered examples could be given to substantiate this 
fact. 

Now what are the things Christians have to 
take to non-christian peoples of which they are so 
deplorably lacking? What have we to offer that is 
so much better than they already have as to make 
it obligatory for us to take it to them? 

In the first place we believe we have a far 
higher and better conception of God than any of 
the non-christian religions. Their idea is that God 
is either identical with the world or universe, or 
that He is wholly transcendent. In either case He 
is impersonal and utterly indifferent towards his 
worshippers. They know nothing of a God who is 
a universal Father. Some of the more enlightened 
among them, as the Buddhists, appear to believe 
in the brotherhood of man; and that is good as 
far as it goes. But alas! they know nothing of the 
great source and power of that brotherhood. They 
know nothing of that great and good God whom 
Jesus Christ so fully revealed and manifested in 
His doctrine and life. It is therefore the first work 
of the missionary to tell the adherents of the other 
religions of the Father. That is a truth which 
cannot fail to find a ready response among the 
more thoughtful and devout. Many, of course, do 
not believe it at first; but it is a truth that is 


154 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


bound to take hold sooner or later, because it is 
what the human heart instinctively craves, and 
will gladly respond to as soon as deep-seated 
prejudice is sufficiently removed. 

After the Fatherhood of God is made known to 
them it is the next step to preach the fuller Gospel 
of the Kingdom; to tell them of their need of a 
personal Saviour to save them from their sins, 
and the great sacrifice Christ made in their behalf. 
This is a prime necessity to any adequate prop¬ 
aganda of the truer religion. There must be some 
real conviction of sin and guilt before the soul is 
brought into an attitude before God to receive the 
full gospel message. That is something no other 
form of religion emphasizes or adequately sets 
forth in their symbols of faith and discipline. So 
far as any of them do decry sin they appeal to 
motives of fear rather than to the sense of guilt 
and shame for having disobeyed the law of God. 
This is characteristic not only of the ethnic reli¬ 
gions, but even largely of the religion of the Old Test¬ 
ament. Lawgivers and prophets preached diligently 
and with great fervor the terrors of the Lord, thun¬ 
dering the commandments of Sinai into the ears of 
the people till the name of Jehovah became frightful 
to them; but it failed to produce any deep or lasting 
conviction of sin and hence little genuine repent¬ 


ance. 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 


155 


Now Christianity, as it came from Christ and 
His immediate apostles, is not open to this criti¬ 
cism. While it does not fail to lay down the law 
against sin in all its forms without fear or favor, it 
does not put undue emphasis on that motive to 
induce repentance, but turns quickly to the higher 
motive, that of the sense of indebtedness to God 
for giving up His beloved Son to die for all His 
erring children. The great truth that God was in 
Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not 
imputing to them their trespasses, suffering with 
Him equally in the great sacrifice, is far more effec¬ 
tive in producing conviction and working repent¬ 
ance in the human heart and life than all the thun- 
derings of Sinai. 

There is no missionary dynamic comparable to 
the Gospel to conquer the human heart. St. Paul 
reckoned it as the great power of God. To him it 
was supremely the power of God and the wisdom 
of God. Writing to the Romans he declared, “I am 
not ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of 
God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” 
And this great apostle found it so wherever he went. 
In every city and town he visited scores of converts 
were made to Jesus Christ, employing no other 
motive or dynamic than the Gospel. Of course the 
apostle did not confine his missionary efforts to the 


156 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


letter of the Gospel; but he never departed from 
the spirit of it. He applied it fearlessly to the condi¬ 
tions of the day and peoples among whom he lived 
and labored. He inveighed against every form of 
vice and lawlessness before high and low alike. He 
was also ever ready to respond to the sick and suf¬ 
fering from whatever cause, applying the gospel 
of healing wherever practicable. 

In this respect Paul anticipated the method of 
our modern missionary boards. Of course he did 
not have the advantage of our missionaries in this 
respect. He had no funds nor facilities of any kind 
for building hospitals, much less for building schools 
or social centers. But he did organize and estab¬ 
lish churches in every city and town, and ordained 
elders to minister to them. What the great apostle 
lacked in ways and means he made up, as far as 
possible, in zeal and self-sacrifice. What is true of 
St. Paul is no doubt true of the other apostles and 
first century missionaries to the extent of their 
ability and power of endurance. We do not hear 
so much about them and their achievements, but 
we know enough to assure us that they were not 
inactive. 

The great need of Christian missions among the 
heathen and other non-Christian peoples is patent 
to all intelligent and charitably minded men and 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 


157 


women who have given the matter careful atten¬ 
tion. Even the most advanced in civilization, like 
the Hindus and Japanese, are vastly benefited by 
Christian missions, as thousands among them have 
borne witness. It awakens in the minds of the more 
thoughtful a profound sense of the limitations of 
their own religions; and if they are not at once 
persuaded to accept and adopt the new and better 
religion, they are moved to renewed efforts to 
improve their old religions. The result is not unfre- 
quently, that many of them are led to accept the 
Christian faith and become themselves home mis¬ 
sionaries. 

Attention has been called to the indirect testi¬ 
mony for the need of Christian missions by the 
president of The Young Men’s Buddhist Associa¬ 
tion of Ceylon. In one of his addresses he appeals 
to liberal Christians to cease sending missionaries 
to their country to propagate Christianity, but 
rather to send learned men to assist in supporting 
the tenets of Buddha, thus practically admitting 
that their own presentation of the claims of Budd¬ 
hism was a failure so far as improving conditions 
among their own people was concerned. The 
Buddhist president could but see that the work 
of the Christian missionaries was efficient in that 
all-important particular. True Christianity never 


158 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


fails to improve moral conduct wherever it is dili¬ 
gently carried. 

From Japan comes similar testimony, only 
more direct. In a speech delivered by Count Okumo 
at the semi-centennial celebration of the coming of 
Protestant Christianity to Japan, he said: “I 
would not say that our Land has been without 
religion. Buddhism has prospered greatly here; 
but this prosperity was largely through political 
means. Now this creed has been practically 
rejected by the better classes, who, being spiritu¬ 
ally thirsty, have nothing to drink.” Count Okumo 
had come to recognize the adequacy of the Chris¬ 
tian Gospel to satisfy this great need. 

As to the more benighted regions, like Central 
Africa, it is the testimony of observing and unbi¬ 
assed witnesses that even the more imperfect pre¬ 
sentation of Christianity is a vast improvement on 
the religions which obtain there. When Theodore 
Roosevelt was on his famous hunt in this wild 
country he improved the opportunity of visiting 
some of these missions. The picture he draws of 
conditions among the natives where Christian 
missionaries have not gone is appalling. It is still 
a dark continent for the most part; but he shows 
that where Christian missions have been estab¬ 
lished a great change for the better is in decided 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 


159 


evidence. “ Those who complain or rail at mission¬ 
ary work in Africa, and who confine themselves to 
pointing out the undoubtedly too numerous errors 
of missionaries, and the short-comings of their 
flocks, would do well to consider that even if the 
light which has been let in is but feeble and gray, 
it has at least dispelled a worse than Stygian dark¬ 
ness. As soon as native African religions—practi¬ 
cally none of which hitherto have evolved any 
substantial ethical basis—develop beyond the most 
primitive stage, they tend, notably in middle 
and western Africa, to grow into malign creeds of 
unspeakable cruelty and immorality, with a bestial 
and revolting ritual and ceremonial. 

.... Even a poorly taught and imperfectly 
understood Christianity, with its underlying foun¬ 
dation of justice and mercy, represents,” he says, 
“an immeasurable advance on such a creed.” In 
Uganda he notes the greatest possible change for 
the better. Here under the influence of mission¬ 
aries who unite disinterestedness and zeal with com¬ 
mon sense, the result is astounding. The majority 
of the people are nominally Christian, and many 
thousands are sincerely Christian, and they show 
their Christianity in practical fashion by putting 
conduct above ceremonial and dogma. And the 
beauty of it is, he adds, Protestants and Roman 


160 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


Catholics work together, showing rivalry only in 
healthy efforts against the common foe. 

Witnesses without number are on record to the 
same effect, all going to show the great need of 
Christian missions among non-Christian peoples 
on every continent of the globe and many islands 
of the sea, and the great benefit they would receive, 
both spiritual and material. Who can read the 
explorations and experiences of Dr. Grenfell and 
his co-workers among the fishermen and Eskimos 
in Labrador, or those of Bishop Rowe and the late 
Archdeacon Stuck and the noble men and women 
associated with them among the natives of Alaska, 
without being mightily moved by the appalling 
need of Christian missions in those frigid regions? 
And the reports of ignorance and superstition and 
squalor and wretchedness that come to our ears 
from many parts of China, how our hearts are made 
to burn and bleed for that much exploited and 
misruled people! 

From every point of the compass we hear the 
Macedonian cry, “Come over and help us!” Have 
we any right, have we the heart, to turn deaf ears 
to that call? 

“Where is your heathen brother? From his 
grave 

Near thy own gates, or ’neath a foreign sky. 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 


161 


From the thronged depth of ocean’s mourning 
wave, 

His answering blood reproachfully doth cry, 

Blood of thy soul, Can all earth’s fountains 
make 

Thy dark stain disappear? Stewards of God, 
awake!” — Mrs. Sigourney. 


CHAPTER XIII 


Christian Social Service 

The whole Law of God is summed up in the 
two great commandments: “Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy 
mind and with all thy strength,” and, “Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself.” Thus spoke the 
divine Founder of Christianity. The major por¬ 
tion of this treatise thus far has been devoted to 
our duty toward God, the chapter on Missions 
being the chief exception. The fact is not over¬ 
looked, however, that the two duties are so closely 
related it is not easy to draw the line between 
them, for the obvious reason that duty toward the 
one always involves duty to the other. As St. 
John says, “He that loveth not his brother whom 
he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not 
seen.” In an attempted survey of the entire field 
of the great essentials of Christian obligation it is 
necessary to treat the two duties separately. 

It should also be said in this connection that 
Christian missions and Christian Social service are 
so nearly related that either might be made to 
cover both fields, the chief difference being that 
missions proper have a wider outlook territorially 


CHRISTIAN SOCIAL SERVICE 


163 


and put more stress on the special claims of religion 
than is usually reckoned as social service. The dif¬ 
ference, however, is chiefly in name; for while 
religion is not, as a rule, kept strictly to social serv¬ 
ice endeavors, it depends very largely on Christian 
teaching and associations to deepen and make per¬ 
manent its hold on the class of persons it is its chief 
aim to benefit. It is true that social centers and 
settlements, like those promoted by our public 
schools, and like Hull House in Chicago, are not 
distinctively religious; yet we know that they are 
directly or indirectly instituted by Christian men 
and women, and that they would never have been 
undertaken or even thought of apart from the 
Christian motive and spirit. Apart from Chris¬ 
tianity there is very little of the altruistic spirit in 
the world, though many worldly minded men are 
ready enough to second a good movement when 
they see it to be a good business proposition. 

But what is meant by social service? The term 
itself is quite familiar to us all, but to the many it is 
little more than a name. They have taken too 
little interest in it to so much as inquire into its 
aims and ends. If it means anything to them at all 
it is merely units or centers for social intercourse, 
recreation, worldly pleasure and amusement; with 
nothing definite in mind in the way of mental, 
moral or spiritual development. 


164 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


4 

But Social Service, as Christians view it, means 
vastly more than this. It means nothing less than 
earnest endeavor to fulfill the command, “Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” It means 
organized and disinterested efforts to ascertain 
what is defective in the civic, social and industrial 
world and to find out ways and means to correct 
it. It means not only the introduction and main¬ 
tenance of social centers and settlements in cities 
and towns among the poor and the foreign popula¬ 
tion where provision is made for instruction in 
letters, reading, writing, recreation and healthy 
sports and pastimes for old and young alike; it 
means that as far as possible and practicable. But 
it endeavors to go much deeper than that. It 
means child-welfare from beginning to end. It 
means seeing that the child is well born and gets 
a fair start in the world; that it is born of healthy 
parentage; that it is properly nourished and safe¬ 
guarded in helpless infancy; that it is carefully 
taught and disciplined in the principles and duties 
of life and character. It means the obligation of 
individuals, churches, schools, guilds, clubs and 
other benefit associations to work for the improve¬ 
ment of civic, social and industrial conditions gen¬ 
erally. It advocates reasonable working hours for 
all men and shortened hours for women, and for 


CHRISTIAN SOCIAL SERVICE 


165 


boys and girls of working age. It means also the 
persistent endeavor to secure by every reasonable 
and lawful means a living wage for all men and 
especially for women who are obliged to earn their 
own and families’ living. It means, too, looking 
after sanitation in stores, shops, manufactories, 
schools, public resorts, streets and tenements. It 
organizes and supports Community Chests and 
otherwise comes to the relief of the helpless and 
over-worked, seeing to it that cases of real need 
only are gratuitously helped, refusing material 
assistance to those who are manifestly able to sup¬ 
port themselves, the aim being to stimulate thrift 
among the poor and dependent, not to pauperize 
them. 

Social Service also takes a vital interest in 
securing and in the enforcement of wise temper¬ 
ance laws and ordinances; and now that prohibi¬ 
tion is the law of the land, it welcomes that great, 
if bold, step in the way of help to the good cause, 
instead of denouncing it as an infringement of 
personal liberty, after the manner of some who 
profess to believe in temperance. Why should the 
demands of self-indulgence be counted as of more 
importance than the protection of millions of 
homes and lives from the ravages of this prince of 
destroyers? 


160 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


While Christian social service puts forth much 
energy for the suppression of intemperance and 
the liquor traffic by the enforcement of temperance 
laws, it does not depend chiefly on that way of 
dealing with the evil, but more on creating public 
sentiment in favor of temperance. It also encour¬ 
ages and supports rescue work in the slums, wars 
against the “white slave traffic” and all social 
impurity among high and low alike, opposes loose 
divorce laws, and discourages hasty marriages; 
advocates such prison reform as will tend to make 
prison life conducive to the development of the 
good impulses of the criminal rather than the baser 
ones; organizes against “loan sharks” and “wild¬ 
cat stock brokers”; opposes bribery among office 
seekers and unscrupulous politicians, contending 
for the purity of the ballot and for government by 
all the people instead of by an “invisible govern¬ 
ment.” 

Social Service workers try to make a thorough 
study of all social and industrial problems, particu¬ 
larly those affected by abnormal conditions and 
subjects. What best to do to help defectives, delin¬ 
quents, subnormals, illegitimates and other unfor¬ 
tunates, and how to lessen their number, deeply 
concerns them, and that not only for the good of 
the victims themselves, but as well for the protec- 


CHRISTIAN SOCIAL SERVICE 


107 


tion of the community and the state against the 
menace of their presence and increase. These 
problems are indeed complicated and perplexing, 
and it is no wonder that many hesitate to grapple 
with them; but the social service worker does not 
balk in the face of difficulties. 

It is the task of the social service worker to look 
into the causes of squalor and poverty and to 
endeavor to find an effective remedy and preven¬ 
tive. He is not content with public charities, city 
or country, which give but temporary relief at 
most. He welcomes that as some help. But he 
seeks most of all to better conditions among the 
poor and dependent in every possible way. Chris¬ 
tian Social Service is concerned chiefly with man’s 
moral and spiritual development, at the same time 
giving special attention to his physical betterment 
because so much depends on a healthy body for 
the normal development of mind and spirit. If it 
seems at times to give undue attention to that side 
of his nature it is for the reason that it is usually 
easier to draw him away from evil associations by 
an appeal to his natural love of pleasure and pas¬ 
times than by a direct appeal to his mental and 
moral nature. It is indeed quite possible to put 
undue stress on mere physical culture; but there 
is also danger of erring on the other side. In former 


168 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


years the churches confined their efforts to ethical 
and religious culture, and the schools wholly to 
mental culture and training; and it is not to be 
wondered at that they did not gain the hold on 
either young or old that obtains today. Both 
seemed oblivious to the fact that an important 
element or factor in the development of manhood 
is getting people interested. For this reason churches 
today build parish houses, equipped with gymna¬ 
siums, bowling alleys, and play and reading rooms, 
as being of little less importance than sanctuaries; 
and public schools and colleges provide similar 
facilities for physical training and amusement. 
In this life, whatever may be true of the life beyond, 
the soul depends on the body for its very existence. 
So to look after the soul’s health to the neglect of the 
body is like looking for fruit in sterile ground. St. 
Paul says the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost; 
therefore the body should be kept healthy and as 
full of vigor as possible. There have indeed been 
fairly well developed souls in frail bodies in spite 
of the handicap; but they will tell you of the great 
disadvantage at which they labored. 

From what has been said it is obvious that 
Christian social service has distinctively in mind 
the salvation of the whole man, not his spiritual 
nature only. It is not content with saving a soul 


CHRISTIAN SOCIAL SERVICE 


169 


here and there, 4 ‘snatching it as a brand from the 
eternal burning,” as it seemed to be with some 
branches of the Church in years gone by. It looks 
to the individual indeed, but not more for the sake 
of the individual than for the sake of the community 
in which he lives. In the Society of God the indi¬ 
vidual counts only to the extent in which he inter¬ 
ests himself in the general good. If one is content 
to save himself only he loses himself. This is the 
law of the Kingdom. “Ye are members one of 
another”. For this reason it is not sufficient that 
one refrain from wronging another by some overt 
or wilful act or speech; one is under obligation to 
protect others in their rights as far as practicable, 
that all may have an equal opportunity to succeed 
in life. This does not mean that one should use un¬ 
due haste in coming to his neighbors’ relief or rescue. 
There is such a thing as making one’s self too 
officious in espousing his neighbors’ cause. But it 
does mean that one should always be alive and 
ready to give timely assistance. 

As has already been said. Social service workers 
try to make a careful study of industrial conditions. 
Therefore they are deeply concerned about unem¬ 
ployment, a condition which all too often con¬ 
fronts them. Unemployment is not only bad for 
the unemployed, bringing, as sooner or later it 


170 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


must, suffering and distress to the family and the 
home; that is indeed a serious consideration. To 
be out of work means soon to be out of money and 
facing the peril of hunger, cold and nakedness. 
People who have never experienced such a condi¬ 
tion little realize the darkness and despair con¬ 
fronting the man who is out of work as he looks 
into the face of wife and children with no prospect 
of earning, or of otherwise obtaining, an honest 
living for them. All this is deplorable enough. But 
there is even a worse feature to unemployment. 
Protracted idleness tends to lessen virility, weaken 
the will and impair efficiency of both the man him¬ 
self and that of his children. It is also the fruitful 
source of unrest, discontent, disorder and some¬ 
times industrial revolution. Then, again, unem¬ 
ployment not unfrequently, or at least all too often, 
ends up in vagrancy—in unlawful and disrepu¬ 
table ways of maintaining actual existence. The 
old saying, “The world owes me a living and if I 
can’t get it honestly I will get it some other way,” 
has apparently become law and gospel to a no 
inconsiderable number of men long out of work. 

But however many or few of the unemployed 
fall into these evil ways, there is no doubt that 
wide-spread unemployment is a condition that 
furnishes a problem for social service workers 


CHRISTIAN SOCIAL SERVICE 


171 


which, however complicated and difficult, must be 
grappled with and as far as possible solved. It is 
not the province of this article to suggest or recom¬ 
mend ways and means to solve this problem. That 
is a task for wiser and more experienced minds. 
Besides, the cause or causes of the evil are so many 
and varied that nothing short of a good deal of 
hard thinking and adventure on the part of many, 
and that with much patience and perseverance, 
may hope ever to solve the problem, that is, change 
conditions so that supply and demand may always 
compare favorably. 

No doubt one of the causes, if not the chief 
cause, of unemployment is the present-day strife 
between capital and labor, growing out of the sel¬ 
fishness and unreasonableness of one or the other or 
both. Sometimes capitalists finding great demand 
for their goods one year employ every available 
worker, even scouring the country far and wide 
for them; but as soon as the market for their 
goods begins to decline they are not sportsmanlike 
enough to stand a little loss in order to keep their 
men at work. Again it may be and doubtless often 
is the fault of the laborers who make it a point to 
give the smallest possible return for their wages 
while at work, making it impossible for the em¬ 
ployer to pay them wages during sthe declining 


172 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


market. There can be little doubt also that ill con¬ 
sidered strikes are frequently responsible for long 
periods of unemployment, as they tend to discour¬ 
age enterprising business men from taking chances. 

It is obvious from these facts and considera¬ 
tions that the task of Social Service is to devise 
ways and means to break up this unholy rivalry 
between capital and labor—to make them both 
see that their interests are common, and that to 
work against each other is to work against their 
own best interests. This is indeed a difficult task; 
and one reason is that when a man finds himself or 
succeeds in getting himself into the capitalist class, 
unless he is a true Christian in spirit, he withholds 
or withdraws fellowship from the working class 
altogether; and that very naturally creates feeling 
which hardens into envy and bitterness. The 
result is industrial disturbance with financial loss 
to the employer and little demand for labor, and 
lower wages for those who find employment. 

Evidently existing organizations of capital and 
labor will never solve the problem of unemploy¬ 
ment alone, for the simple reason that the two 
organizations act as rivals and not as partners in 
the concern. Not till the two organizations get 
together and study with open and sympathetic 
minds each others’ interests and show a willing- 


CHRISTIAN SOCIAL SERVICE 


173 


ness to share in profit or loss as the case may be, 
remembering that 4 'community of interests is 
social salvation”, will the perplexing problem ever 
be solved. 

Such as outlined in this chapter is the stupend¬ 
ous task of social and industrial reformers. On its 
face it looks like a mountain. But mountains have 
been removed, and this one may be. To doubt it 
is to doubt the superiority of virtue and goodness. 
It requires but faith and perseverence on the part 
of the servants of God. The day may be distant, 
but the time must and will come when brain and 
brawn will learn to work hand in hand, even as 
they were designed to by their Creator. 

No attempt has been made in this essay to com¬ 
pass the entire field of Christian Social Service. 
The field is very large. There are many books by 
much abler writers devoted wholly to this and 
kindred subjects. Our only aim has been to say 
sufficient to make the point that this form of serv¬ 
ice to humanity is one of the great essentials of the 
Christian religion. It is not implied that it is 
required of every Christian to take an active part 
in every line of social service work; that would 
not be possible. But it is the part of everyone to 
show some practical interest in bettering condi¬ 
tions in the social, civic and industrial world. No 


174 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


one has a right to say that he is in no sense his 
neighbor’s keeper. When Jesus was setting forth 
the plain and all-important conditions of eternal 
life He made no reference to creed, dogma or 
ritual, but gave solemn utterance to the parable of 
the Judgment, or the Sheep and the Goats. He 
made Himself one with the hungry, the naked and 
destitute, the sick and the imprisoned, the stranger 
and every other unfortunate; declaring that they 
who neglected them neglected Him, and that they 
who remembered them remembered Him, and on 
that basis final judgment would be rendered, and 
that, too, whether or not they knew Him. 


CHAPTER XIV 


Christian Education 

The Importance of Religious Education has 
always been recognized by the Christian Church, 
but not until more recent years has it been recog¬ 
nized and treated as essential to the Christian life. 
It was the belief of the many that while the ability 
to read the Bible was a good thing for a Christian 
to have, one could be just as good and happy a 
Christian without any education whatever. The 
all-important thing was to 4 ‘get religion’’, which 
meant little more in most cases than pious fervor 
aroused by impassioned preaching and great unc¬ 
tion in prayer and singing, a fervor which soon 
died out after the period of special effort and excite¬ 
ment was over. It had little or nothing to do with 
character building, or with stimulating the sense 
of responsibility in the sight of God for the improve¬ 
ment of moral conditions in one’s community, or 
for the extension of the Kingdom of God in the 
wider field. It was not because one desired or 
determined primarily to live for high ideals and 
become a more useful man in the world, but because 
he feared that if he should die before taking the 
step he would be not only denied entrance at 
heaven’s gate, but would be hopelessly lost. 


176 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


Now we all must agree, those of us who have 
made a serious study of the gospels, that such a 
conception of religion is utterly repugnant to the 
teachings of Jesus Christ. It is a thoroughly self- 
seeking kind of religion, defeating its own end. 
Jesus taught by precept and by parable that all 
self-seeking is self-losing; but these religionists 
preached and believed that the all-important end 
of becoming a Christian was to make good their 
escape from future punishment and secure their 
admission into the heavenly mansions at the last 
great day. The idea of being a Christian for the 
sake of honoring God and making themselves bene¬ 
factors among men was little if at all in evidence. 

Of course the Church as a whole has always 
given some attention to the religious training of 
her children, requiring them to learn at least the 
Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed and the Ten 
Commandments. It has also for many years 
maintained Church, or Sunday Schools in most 
parishes, in which a few men and a larger number 
of women and girls have taken a more or less active 
interest as officers and teachers. But upon more 
than this the Church has not insisted. It has 
apparently been content for the most part to have 
the laity attend and support its regular services 
and to make an occasional offering to missions. 


CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 


177 


So indifferent has the generality of the member¬ 
ship of the Church been toward religious instruc¬ 
tion that few of them subscribe for or read their 
own Church papers or other religious literature. 
The result is that religion, instead of being the 
chief concern of the laity, is with most of them a 
mere side interest; business, current events, plea¬ 
sure and pastime almost wholly absorbing their 
time and attention. 

It is a profound source of gratitude that in 
recent years steps have been taken by the Church 
to correct this lack of active interest in religious 
education. What was for so many years almost 
chaos has taken on definite form. We have now 
in the Church a “ General Board of Religious Educa¬ 
tion”, thoroughly organized and officered, to over¬ 
see and direct the religious instruction of the chil¬ 
dren and youth and to interest as far as possible 
the entire membership. It aims to unify and co¬ 
ordinate all available sources and agencies for 
instruction in righteousness. It studies methods 
and devises ways and means for reaching the 
largest possible number, not only of the children of 
the Church, but also of the unchurched wherever 
found. It undertakes to develop wise leadership 
and to prepare competent teachers for the Church 
schools, providing them with nurture series and 


178 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


other helps, and in every way to make the Church 
school an integral factor in the work of extending 
the Kingdom of God. 

But why insist on the religious education of 
the children and youth of the Church and the 
land, not to speak of those of maturer years, and 
why should it be maintained that no one’s educa¬ 
tion is complete or adequate who has not learned 
the cardinal doctrines of the Christian life? The 
answer has already been indicated in this article. 
It is to counteract ignorance of the truth and of 
the claims of religion, to correct erroneous and mis¬ 
leading ideas and impressions which the unin¬ 
structed have received and are wont to hold as to 
what Christianity is and as to what Christians are 
expected to believe and do. The ignorance in the 
world and even in the Church along this line is 
appalling. Even among those commonly reckoned 
as educated people, graduates of high schools and 
colleges, the most crude and primitive views are 
held on the subject of religion. This is in part 
owing to the crass teachings of mediaeval and more 
modern schools and religious cults; but even more 
directly to lack of early parental and home train¬ 
ing and the character of the schools and institu¬ 
tions which they have attended, schools which 
either teach no religion at all, or treat it as of so 


CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 


179 


little importance as to give it no place in their cur¬ 
riculum. 

It is true that in the mediaeval Church religi¬ 
ous education was not neglected. On the contrary 
the Roman Catholic Church was most diligent 
and scrupulous in instructing their children in 
what they deemed essential to the Christian life. 
As Dr. McGiffert says, “Catholicism was not only 
a complex of theological doctrine, but also a well- 
defined system of moral teaching. Indeed the 
teaching was its most important point. The whole 
career of the Christian was carefully regulated, 
and with its ethical code, its confessional and its 
penitential discipline, the Church afforded con¬ 
stant instruction in the conduct of life.” But unfor¬ 
tunately the instruction which the Church afforded 
had too little of the spirit of the Gospel to prove 
of permanent worth to the masses. It failed to 
hold up the highest motives and ideals, making 
sacraments and masses and other rites and cere¬ 
monies of supreme importance in the endeavor to 
meet the approval of God. When the Reformation 
came, while this fault was to some extent corrected, 
the reformers went to the other extreme of making 
moral conduct secondary and faith in the atone¬ 
ment the all-important condition of salvation. 
“The dogma of a present salvation by faith alone 


180 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


meant the repudiation of righteousness by works 
and the consequent relegation of instruction in 
morals to a wholly subordinate place.” (McGiffert). 

As an illustration of the crude ideas of the 
uninstructed on the subject of religion, take, 
among others, the doctrine of God. Almost all 
men believe in the existence of some supreme 
Being in the universe; but how few have any 
clear understanding of the Christian conception of 
God! To most men, as He is to children, He is a 
monster being, wholly transcendent and dwelling 
far apart from his creatures, taking little or no 
interest in the affairs of men and concerned chiefly 
for his own glory. He is a great King and potentate, 
severely exacting, and having little if any pleasure 
in the welfare and happiness of his creatures. They 
know practically nothing about Him as a Father 
and find no joy in serving Him. Now if they had 
been from the first carefully instructed in the 
doctrine of God they would think of Him as being 
almost the exact opposite of this crude conception 
of the Deity. They would think of Him in the 
light of Jesus Christ, as being wholly like Him in 
sympathy and good will toward his children. They 
would know Him as their Father and their Friend. 
He would mean to them just what He is so plainly 
revealed to us in the Gospel to be, a God of love 


CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 


181 


unbounded and finding his highest joy in their 
repentance and eternal salvation. 

Take, again, the conception of the Church. 
As a matter of fact it is little wonder that such 
erroneous views of the meaning and purpose of the 
Church are entertained by many people. The 
unhappy divisions deplored in a former chapter 
have very naturally confused the minds of old and 
young, leading many to treat with indifference 
membership in it. They have come to the conclu¬ 
sion that because of this apparent chaotic state of 
Christendom the Church has no claim upon them, 
and that they can be just as good Christians out¬ 
side as in. That the Church as a whole is a Divine 
institution and as such essential to the perpetuity 
of the religion of Jesus Christ in the world is little 
understood by the masses of mankind. It is there¬ 
fore of vital importance that old and young be 
taught and made to understand that the Church is 
the Body of Christ, his continued Incarnation in 
the world, and that every member thereof sus¬ 
tains some such relation to Christ as the hands and 
feet and tongue of a man sustain to the rest of his 
body, and that neither of those members can 
function if detached therefrom. The Church is an 
institution designed and fitted to synthesize and 
direct the gifts and powers of man in the service of 


182 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


God and his fellow men. It is an educatory and 
working institution as well as an institution for 
worship and fellowship. Christian education aims 
to set every one right on the idea of the Church, 
making them understand that it is something 
radically different from every other association of 
men or women in the world, that it is not an insur¬ 
ance organization or order, membership of which 
is a guarantee to an eternal inheritance; nor a 
guild or club for mutual benefit or social enjoyment, 
though not excluding these; but rather the combi¬ 
nation of a school and a workshop, in which learn¬ 
ing and service go hand in hand. This is far from 
being well understood and appreciated by the 
many, and so right along this line there is a vast 
field for religious educators; for it is their work not 
only to enlighten the mind of child and youth, but 
as well to set them at work in some capacity of use¬ 
fulness and helpfulness in the Kingdom of God. 
As some member of the Board of Religious Educa¬ 
tion has definitely expressed it, “Its curriculum 
consists not merely in subjects to be learned, but 
of activities to be developed, habits to be formed, 
and ideals to be created.” 

Take again, for illustration, the meaning of the 
Christian life. What crude and inadequate ideas 
seem to obtain among very many among us! They 


CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 


183 


dissociate it almost entirely from its relation to the 
present life. It has little or nothing to do with that 
which makes life a valuable asset in this world. 
They would give it no attention whatever did they 
not fear the neglect of it would imperil their hope 
of future safety. To them it sustains little or no 
relation to character or personal worth; much less 
does it mean any positive obligation on their part 
toward bettering conditions beyond the bounds of 
their own immediate circle. What care they for 
missions, home or foreign, or for the spiritual uplift 
of society or state? They have no ears to hear the 
appeals for sympathy and help in these directions. 
But had they been properly instructed in early 
life in regard to these claims of the Gospel they 
would not only have a better understanding of the 
meaning of the Christian life, they would gladly 
give a ready response to the calls for service along 
every line. They would not be idlers in the vine¬ 
yard of the Lord, much less parasites. You cannot 
expect the many to become interested in the things 
they have never had thoroughly explained to them. 
The vast majority of those who are ignorant of the 
doctrines and duties of religion are not so from 
actual choice, but because their religious education 
has been neglected in the home and the Church. 
They have not had the opportunity to learn. 


184 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


Here then is a vast field for Christian teachers, 
and their duties carry them beyond the bounds of 
Church and parish schools. They must find their 
way if possible into prayerless homes and public 
schools and colleges and wherever else religion is 
unknown or neglected. The task is not an easy 
one, but it is being done in some localities, and if 
persisted in may become widespread. 

This suggests the important consideration that 
religious education is designed not only to incul¬ 
cate the truths and duties of religion, but as well 
to safeguard religion itself. As Bishop Brent has 
well said, “ Education without religion is education 
without a soul.” There are few things more to be 
deprecated than education unsafeguarded by the 
sanctions of religion. Nations and peoples that 
have put education to the fore and relegated reli¬ 
gion to a position of secondary moment have sooner 
or later come to grief. Greece in the days of the 
Sophists furnishes an illustration of making specu¬ 
lation and secular learning everything and religion 
practically nothing. It meant the loss of her high 
ideals and with it her moral decline and national 
disruption. While retaining the form of religion 
and building altars to a multiplicity of gods, they 
became skeptical and atheistic in fact. France, in 
her revolt against the domination of the Roman 


CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 


185 


heirarchy during the reign of Louis XVI, and prac¬ 
tically renouncing all religion as a nation, furnishes 
another illustration of the peril of trusting to the 
wisdom of men alone to maintain good government. 
It meant a long period of moral degeneracy and 
national weakness. And Russia, under an infidel 
soviet government, dominated by the well educated 
Lenine and Trotzky, is proof beyond controversy 
of the unnatural progeny of mere learning without 
the safeguard of religion. In the soul of a man or a 
nation that fears and honors God education is a 
great asset; but in the soul of an evil-minded man 
or nation it is diabolical. The most dangerous 
criminal in the world is the educated criminal; for 
he is able to apply his superior knowledge of men 
and affairs to prey upon his victims. As a manipu¬ 
lator of stocks and bonds he is a prince among 
gamblers, and as a bank robber and embezzler he 
knows only too well how to cover up his tracks. 
If a little learning is a dangerous thing, how much 
more learning without religion! 

It is true there have been some note-worthy 
exceptions to this rule—some great and good men 
and women who have lived years in doubt and died 
without faith in the existence of God or the hope 
of immortality. Such were John Stuart Mill and 
Harriet Martineau, and also August Compte, 



186 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


their teacher, and others who could be named, 
and whom we may well concede as worthy to be 
enrolled among the excellent of the earth. They 
were avowed infidels and even atheists, and believed 
that education and scientific learning, without 
supernatural religion, were sufficient to guide man¬ 
kind into all attainable usefulness and happiness— 
to furnish adequate motives to a just and good 
life. And they exemplified the supposed reasonable¬ 
ness of their doctrines by their exceptional conduct 
before the world, and finally died without a stain 
on their character or memory. 

But can it truthfully be said that these noble 
souls were in no sense or degree indebted to religion 
for the exceptional lives they lived and for the 
philanthrophy and disinterestedness for which they 
were noted? Let us look at the facts a moment. It 
is well known that Compte was a normal child of the 
Church throughout his youth, and drank deeply 
at the fountain of truth before materialism attrac¬ 
ted his attention. It is said that “his wife of whom 
he was almost a worshipper, redoubled his senti¬ 
mentality, and with his heart colored by an early 
religion and a semi-religious domestic love, he 
wrought out a religion of humanity as being the 
greatest pursuit of earth. Could the philosophy 
of atheism have so colored his soul?” Harriet 


CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 


187 


Martineau was also a devout disciple of the Church 
and was thirty years of age before she learned to 
reject the supernatural revelations of the Gospels 
and the Divinity of Christ. Her first, which are 
always the deepest impressions, were made by 
Christianity; and though in later years she became, 
under the depression of a too formal religion, a 
materialist and unbeliever, her whole life was 
colored by the lessons she learned at the altars of 
the established Church. 

But what about John Stuart Mill? He was not 
reared at the portals of the sactuary. His father 
was a pronounced infidel and atheist, and diligently 
instilled his irreligious tenets in the mind of his 
precocious son. How shall we account for the 
exemplary life he is reputed to have lived? The 
answer is, Though his father was an infidel, he 
was not the distinguished scientist’s only teacher. 
He was also a disciple of Compte, and an almost 
worshipper of Harriet Martineau. The high moral 
sentiments he entertained he drew more from these 
apostate children of the Church than from his 
infidel father. Thus indirectly, but none the less 
potentially, was his life and character moulded by 
the peerless doctrines and precepts of Christianity. 
As Professor Swing once said, to whom the writer 
is indebted largely for the facts and conclusions 


188 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


recorded in this and the preceding paragraphs, Mill 
“did not acquire his lofty style from atheism, but 
from a crumbling temple of piety, when the last 
hymns of worship were still haunting his sad spirit.” 

It argues to no purpose, therefore, that because 
some infidels have been noble and good, true reli¬ 
gion is not the chief and most fruitful source of 
righteousness. The universality of religion has 
made it practically impossible for intelligent minds 
to spring up and good characters to be formed out 
from under the influence of the temples of religion. 

From the above facts and arguments are we 
not justified in the conclusion that neither religion 
nor education is a permanent boon to mankind when 
functioning independently one of the other? They 
were never intended to grow in separate gardens. 
The offspring of either alone are bastards and not 
sons. They are an unnatural and deformed pro¬ 
geny, and as such a menace to civilization. The 
one nurtures superstition, fanaticism, despotism, 
cruelty, oppression, sectarian bigotry and intoler¬ 
ance, hatred, revenge and even murder in the name 
of its deity; the other breeds and stimulates decep¬ 
tion, embezzlement, fraud, graft, profiteering and 
other high crimes and misdemeanors. The one is 
intolerant and the other is intolerable. For both 
salvation and safety the two must be joined in 


CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 


189 


permanent union and concord. Thus will they 
prove true yoke-fellows in bringing about the 
redemption of humanity. 


CHAPTER XV 


Important, If Not Essential 

There are a number of doctrines appertaining 
to the Christian religion, some of which have com¬ 
forted and inspired many thoughtful souls, and all 
of which have exercised the minds of many at one 
time or another, not dwelt on at length, if at all, 
in the body of this book, for the reason that wide 
differences of opinion and interpretation have been 
and still are held by accredited Christians concern¬ 
ing them. Prominent among these are the Trinity, 
Miracles, Apocalypticism, Mysticism, the doc¬ 
trine of devils, and the limits of probation. 

The first named of these doctrines, that of the 
Trinity of the Godhead, while nowhere definitely 
stated in the Scriptures, is so plainly implied that 
it would seem there could be no reasonable grounds 
for doubt of its merit as an article of faith in the 
creeds of the Church. Certainly Divine attributes 
are repeatedly ascribed alike to the Father, the 
Son, and to the Holy Ghost; and as there is but 
one God, so the Three must be in some mystical 
sense united in the One. There would seem to be 
no other alternative. But as there are those who 
cannot honestly receive this doctrine as an article 


IMPORTANT—IF NOT ESSENTIAL 


191 


of their faith, yet give every other evidence of 
loyalty to Christ, the author has not thought it 
necessary to class it among the great essentials of 
the Christian faith. 

But how about miracles? Can one be a consis¬ 
tent Christian and not believe that Christ wrought 
actual miracles during his ministry? That must 
depend on what one understands a miracle to imply. 
If one understands a miracle to imply a flat contra¬ 
diction of the laws of nature, then one may reason¬ 
ably doubt that Jesus wrought miracles; for Jesus 
certainly contravened no law of nature. That 
would have been to contradict Himself. Because 
we may not be able to understand or explain how 
He controlled and applied the laws of nature to 
heal the sick, open the eyes of the blind, feed the 
hungry and raise the dead, is not sufficient grounds 
for doubting his power to do these wonderful 
deeds. In every age men of genius and research 
have found ways and means of pitting one law of 
nature against another to accomplish certain mar¬ 
velous results. We are living today in the enjoy¬ 
ment of utilities and facilities, owing to the inven¬ 
tive genius of men, which would have been looked 
upon at an earlier day and age as impossible as 
some of the miracles recorded of Christ s ministry 
look to us today. But if we believe He had the 


192 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


power of God at his command far beyond that of 
ordinary men then we ought not to think it impos¬ 
sible that He should have had the ability to turn 
the laws of nature in any direction of mercy which 
appealed to his great nature. As one testified of 
Him in his day, “He could do the wonders that He 
did because God was with Him.” (John 3:2.) The 
greatest miracle after all was Jesus Himself, and 
that too, whether we accept the authenticity of the 
Infancy stories of the gospels in every particular 
or not; for his whole life was a marvelous manifes¬ 
tation of the power and goodness of God. But as 
He Himself put far less stress on his miracles than 
He did on His example and teachings, one does 
not necessarily deny Him as his Lord who is not 
fully persuaded that He wrought miracles. He 
may not be consistent, but he is not necessarily 
unChristian. 

Some may wonder why what has come to be 
called Apocalypticism has not been classed in this 
treatise as one of the great essentials of the Chris¬ 
tian faith. Referring as it does to the personal and 
visible coming and reign of Christ on earth in the 
near or distant future, it is surely a matter of no 
minor importance. Why then has it been left out 
of the reckoning as one of the great essentials? The 
answer is because it is so difficult to understand 


IMPORTANT—IF NOT ESSENTIAL 


193 


and because those who think they understand it 
differ so widely in their interpretations. The New 
Testament writers do not agree among themselves 
in every detail. At first they looked for the per¬ 
sonal return of the Lord in their day; yet they 
believed He was with them in full power and sym¬ 
pathy from the very beginning of their active min¬ 
istry, in accordance with His promise to be with 
them always, even to the end of the age. How they 
reconciled this dual conception of his appearing 
and presence we are not informed. He was always 
with them, yet he was still to come. Later, when 
He failed to appear in visible form as they expected, 
they came to the conclusion that He must have 
decided to postpone his advent on account of His 
long-suffering, giving the impenitent more time to 
make up their minds to turn from their sins. Is it 
not possible that they misunderstood Him both as 
to the time and the nature of His advent, that while 
they were right in looking for His speedy coming 
in fact, they were wrong in expecting Him to come 
in material and visible form to reign like other 
monarchs of the earth, differing from them only 
in the purity and vastly greater power of his reign? 
But whatever may have been their way of looking 
for His advent it did not hinder them from living 
and mightily working in the consciousness of His 
presence and power. 


194 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


That there is a great underlying truth in the 
doctrine of apocalypticism there is every evidence. 
It witnesses to the certain and unfailing presence 
of the risen Christ with His people, that He is in 
the w T orld for salvation and righteous judgment, 
and that He is leaving nothing undone to bring the 
City of God into the world and to establish it on a 
solid foundation among the children of men. Prob¬ 
ably all that is essential to the doctrine of apocalyp¬ 
ticism is implicit in the chapters on the Resurrec¬ 
tion, the Ascension, the Holy Spirit, and the 
Church. That it means far more than is intimated 
in this chapter the author is fully persuaded. 

As regards Mysticism, a sentiment or truth 
which has had a very strong hold on many of the 
most highly inspired apostles and teachers of reli¬ 
gion in all periods, much might be said in favor of 
making it one of the great essentials of the Chris¬ 
tian faith. As defined by one of its leading modern 
exponents, “Mysticism is the science of the soul 
as it ventures into the higher life of the Spirit,” or, 
“the art of union with Reality. A mystic is one 
who has attained that union in a greater or less 
degree; or one who aims at and believes in its 
attainment.” (Evelyn Underhill.) In the light of 
this definition mysticism must be reckoned as 
most significant, and highly worthy of the serious 


IMPORTANT—IF NOT ESSENTIAL 


195 


consideration of every Christian. We know that 
our Lord was first and chief among mystics in His 
day. He most certainly attained and enjoyed union 
with the Great Reality, for He attained and enjoyed 
perfect union with His Father. Whether the 
apostles and evangelists knew that they were 
mystics or not, some of them, we are sure, made 
great progress in the mystic art, for their writings 
are replete with evidences of it. Paul and John 
certainly rose to high eminence in the spiritual life. 
They drank very deeply at that well of water which 
evermore springs up unto everlasting life. And 
had it not been for the long list of mystics that 
arose during the long dark period of mediaeval 
Christianity the Church would scarcely have sur¬ 
vived its enemies within and without. 

The writer of this book has been a deeply 
interested student of mysticism for many years 
and is thoroughly persuaded of its great underlying 
truth, but believing that all that is actually essen¬ 
tial to be received by a disciple of Christ as to the 
content of mysticism is implied in the chapter on 
the Holy Spirit, and realizing that many good 
Christians disavow being in any sense mystics, 
mistakingly associating it with Christian Science, 
theosophy, new thought, occultism or some other 
proposed substitute for Christianity, he has not 


196 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


deemed it expedient to make it the topic of a separ¬ 
ate chapter. 

Another doctrine, or problem, which has not 
been made the topic of a separate chapter in this 
book is that pertaining to the devil or Satan so 
often mentioned in the Scriptures. That there is 
abundant evidence of the presence and powerful 
influence of base and malicious forces in the world 
opposing God and all righteousness, and appar¬ 
ently, if not deliberately, aiming to overthrow the 
Divine government, cannot be denied nor ignored. 
Now the question is, Does the Christian faith 
require one to believe in the actual existence of a 
personal devil second only in wisdom and power 
to Almighty God? Is there no possible escape from 
the Gnostic and Manichaean dualism of the second 
century which practically recognized the existence 
of a good God and an evil god in the universe con¬ 
tending fiercely as competitors for dominion over 
the bodies and souls of men? A literal interpreta¬ 
tion of numerous passages of Scripture would seem 
to sustain this unpalatable theory. But are we 
obliged to take these passages in their most literal 
sense? May we not make some allowance for 
Oriental imagery and the almost universal belief 
in a good and an evil deity in the world? That 
Jesus used the same terminology does not neces- 


IMPORTANT—IF NOT ESSENTIAL 


197 


sarily mean that He believed in this form of dual¬ 
ism, but that He deemed it not wise to attempt too 
much in the way of correcting beliefs that were so 
deeply rooted in human nature as this error, even 
as He did not try to correct their inherited ideas on 
the use of strong drink, the right to hold slaves 
and the belief in the divine right of kings. It was 
his special work to sow good seed and to create 
ideals which would eventually dissipate in the 
minds of men all false beliefs and evil practices. 
The high ideals of justice and self-control and the 
equality of all men in the sight of God which He 
ever held up have borne good fruit in the abolition 
of slavery in all parts of the civilized world, the 
passing of wise and increasingly effective temper¬ 
ance laws in this and other well-governed coun¬ 
tries and in dealing a death-blow to the obsession of 
the divine right of kings. Is it not a fact that it 
would be difficult to find today in any school of 
learning, sacred or secular, a pronounced believer 
in a personal devil in the sense entertained by 
theologians of an earlier day? That there are evil 
spirits in the world, embodied and possibly unem¬ 
bodied, we see too many evidences in the words and 
deeds of mankind to doubt or deny. But they are 
the spirits of wicked and designing men and women 
yet in the world and possibly of departed spirits 


198 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


that in some mysterious way are able to haunt the 
living. An apostle characterizes them as the world- 
rulers of this darkness, spiritual hosts of wicked¬ 
ness in the heavenlies. (Eph. 6.) 

Probably as good a definition of the concept 
“devil” or “Satan” as has ever been given is that 
by Dr. Horace Bushnell in his great treatise on 
“Nature and the Supernatural,” (pp. 134-5). 
“ Satan, or the devil, is not the name of any particu¬ 
lar person, neither is it a personation merely of 
temptation or impersonal evil in the sense of moral 
evil; but the name is a name that generalizes bad 
persons or spirits, with their bad thoughts and 
characters, many in one. That there is any single 
one of them who, by distinction or pre-eminence, 
is called Satan or the devil, is wholly improbable. 
The name is one taken up by the imagination to 
designate or embody, in a conception the mind 
can most easily wield, the all or total of bad minds 
or powers.” 

But whether or not we accept this or any other 
theory of the powers of evil, it is certain that moral 
evil does exist in the world from whatever source 
it may come, and that the Christian has no alter¬ 
native than to recognize the fact and in the power 
of the Divine Spirit to resist it. It is not required of 
us to hold or to attain to strictly correct views of 


IMPORTANT—IF NOT ESSENTIAL 


199 


the origin or the direct cause of evil, but recogniz¬ 
ing the fact that it does exist, to see that it does 
not get the dominion over us. 

Still another subject which has not been treated 
as an essential in our reckoning, though a matter 
of grave and absorbing interest to many minds in 
all periods of Christian history, is that of Probation 
in its relation to final salvation and destiny. Tradi¬ 
tional theology, interpreting the words of Christ 
and the apostles in their most literal and merciless 
sense, has made short work of this question by 
declaring the certainty that all souls departing this 
life without openly confessing Christ are doomed 
to endless death or punishment for the sins com¬ 
mitted here on the earth. That there were always 
thoughtful and charitable minds to whom this 
dogma was and is repugnant there is abundant 
evidence, and it has without doubt kept many of 
them out of the historic Church. Today it would 
not be easy to find a Christian so heartless and 
hopeless as to defend such a cruel dogma. But 
the question is. Has not the reaction gone so far 
as to encourage many to entertain the hope that 
all souls will be finally saved regardless of how sel¬ 
fish and debased they may have become in this 
life? It is contended by some that God having 
brought into life all mankind, if He is a God of 


200 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


justice and love, is under moral obligation to save 
all, and therefore must have power so to do. But 
the question is. Can even God, having created man 
free to think and choose for himself, overpower the 
selfish and determined rebellious will in him and 
make him fit for fellowship with the saints in the 
heavenly state in spite of his self and determined 
will? Then there is the further question; If a man, 
in the face of every appeal of reason and mercy, 
deliberately and defiantly follows his selfish and 
sinful inclinations till he becomes as it were case- 
hardened what has God to build on in such a soul? 
No one has put this sentiment clearer or more for¬ 
cibly than Dr. Mason in his “Faith of the Gospel”: 
(pp. 412-13.) “The lost may be ‘many,’ or ‘few’; 
for these are relative terms, (Lk. 13:23-24); but 
whether many or few, they will be lost, not because 
God would not elect them to partake of his grace, 
nor because his Spirit was weary of striving with 
them and gave them up before they were fully 
tested, nor because they failed to comply with a 
standard that was beyond them, nor because they 
mistook the meaning of the Gospel and held back 
from it. All who are lost will be lost by their own 
fault, not because they were weak, unimaginative, 
or stupid; but because they were wicked,—because 
when conscience appealed to them, they silenced 


IMPORTANT—IF NOT ESSENTIAL 


201 


it,—because they wilfully quenched what light 
they had,—because they chose what was wrong, 
knowing it was wrong, and preferring it to the 
right,—and that not once or twice, but persistently, 
and with increasing persistence, and to the end, 
until they have destroyed in themselves the facul¬ 
ties which might have expanded into faith, hope 
and charity, which are the life of the soul. They 
will be lost because they have fixed and determined 
their characters for evil; so that all good that could 
be offered them further would only be made food 
for fresh evil.” 

In reply to this reasoning of Mason some will 
be ready to say. Does it not after all delimit the 
power and wisdom and benevolence of God in 
bringing into this world immortal souls which He 
cannot save against their will? The author of this 
volume does not so think, and his reasons may be 
inferred from the chapters on the Being and Char¬ 
acter of God. He believes in the infinite wisdom 
and power and goodness of God and that He was 
justified in all his works of creation from the begin¬ 
ning. In his wisdom and goodness He created man 
a free moral agent, thereby making absolute con¬ 
trol of his will impossible. In so doing He showed 
man favor above every other creature on the foot¬ 
stool. He put the attainment of the highest degree 


£02 


THE GREAT ESSENTIALS 


of usefulness and happiness within his reach. He 
holds out every possible incentive to move him to 
choose wisely and proffers him every possible source 
of helpfulness. That He has done and will do all 
that can be done to save every soul from sin and 
its direful consequences there can be no reasonable 
question. Whether the time will ever come when 
every soul will yield his self-will to the Divine will 
the author is in grave doubt. Neither Christ nor 
his apostles held out any hope for the selfish and 
incorrigible; and why should we? At the same 
time the author would not call it a mortal sin to 
hope for the final salvation of all mankind. 

Our last word is, Take no chances; Repent and 
receive the Gospel, that you may be set free from 
all selfishness and every other form of unrighteous¬ 
ness, and be filled with that purity and goodness 
of God apart from which no man may see the Lord. 


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